It is the view of the Workers Party that the UK Supreme Court judgement of 19th November 2025 lays bare the failures of Northern Ireland’s segregated education system. While its focus was on a controlled sector primary school, it has implications for the teaching of RE within all primary and secondary schools in NI as we outline below.

We agree with scholars Deb et al (2026), who note that “the reality is that the rigidity of Northern Ireland’s Religious Education and Collective Worship syllabus …, and its obligations on ‘every granted-aided school’ to promote a Christian ethos in line with the syllabus, has long been at odds with the complexity of the society it serves”.

The judgement confirmed the earlier High Court ruling which found as a matter of fact that religion has been not taught in an “objective, critical, and pluralist” manner in the school in question. Crucially, the Supreme Court ruling also indicates that if religious education and worship is not “objective, critical and pluralistic”, the notional ability to opt out from RE and in-school worship will still place a school in breach of Human Rights law. Professor Russell Sanberg from Cardiff University noted that, “it is now clear that an opt-out will not be sufficient if it is capable of unduly burdening the parents”.

In other words, parents don’t have to prove that an opt-out has been unduly burdensome: an opt-out would not be legal if it can possibly burden parents.