Read our stories

David Hines

The Secular Education Network is not anti-Christian; it includes dozens of Christian people, including myself. I used to teach bible studies, and spent many years as a Methodist preacher... read more

Mark Honeychurch

I understand both sides of the argument for secularism, having been a practising Christian before becoming an atheist... read more

Sonja Farmer

When door knockers come to my front door, as an adult I can engage with them on a level field.  When similar people preach to our youngest school children in class, any such balance is sorely missing... read more

Tina Carlson

When I first heard that Religious Instruction was happening in schools here, I thought to myself, surely that must be an anomaly. My children were only pre-schoolers at this point... read more

Joshua Barley

I became worried about evangelical intrusions into schools after becoming aware of the overt ambitions of a certain church to the access through Bible in Schools as a means to proselytize to children for the purposes of gaining new converts... read more

Rachel Cathie

I feel that my son was excluded from normal school learning during the ‘Bible in schools’ sessions.  He had to sit in the library listening to the principal read books to children aged 5-12... read more

Greg Risk

My two boys, 8 and 10, go to our local school which as far as I know does not push religious instruction.  Then, one of their teachers, a Christian lady, began to come across as rather righteous... read more

Stanislav Kulesh

When my son started school, I was very surprised to see that religious instruction was part of his day at his secular, state school, and keen to learn more... read more

Colin Campbell

My twin daughters were opted out of Bible Studies throughout their primary school years at their school. In their final year, they were forced to attend the classes whenever the teacher supervising the opt-out children was unavailable. They were instructed to research the birth of Christ and the Christmas story, […].. read more

Alex

I was in a rural state school that taught RI years 1-6 starting 1997. My brothers and I had the good fortune of being excused from these classes, but that was a battle hard fought by my ideological parents... read more

Jaymie

When I was five years old, my public school taught scripture once a week which you had to pay for. This wasn’t known by my parents... read more

When I opted my kid out their teacher tried to tell me it was the same as opting out of maths or English 😒 no, it’s really not

River (An experience in 2019)

The state school my kids started at had a series of old people who came in to teach/terrify/confuse the younger classes. Back then there was no opt out option.

On Thursday, before Easter, after school my 7 year old was a crying mess and wanted us to stop the Jews killing Jesus tomorrow… finally found out that their easter lesson was gruesome and not age appropriate. I was so angry with the school not supervising the lay teachers on this..

Weirdly enough, we took the kids all out of state school and they went through Catholic school with no problems at all.

Lyn (An experience in 1983)

I had “religious education” in my secular public school as a child, which would have been cool if we’d learned about different religions and beliefs. Nope, what we received was Christian indoctrination – we prayed and sang hymns and were taught the bible as though it was history. I was so confused because adults were telling me that these random fairy stories were true. There is no place in secular education for this.

Milly (An experience in 1999-2007)

As a child my school offered religious education and my parents opted out. I had to sit in a corridor for over an hour each Friday morning. On several occasions, the RE ‘teachers’ sent my friends to get me, with promises of lollies and pleas that they needed help with the singing to encourage me to join in against my parents’ wishes. Indoctrination pure and simple. I wonder what values they thought they were teaching?!

Leith (An experience in 1987-1990)

My child was at a school where the bible session was optional, but when I said he was not religious, and he wasn’t to go I was told he had to as there was no one to supervise him. I offered and after 6 weeks I had 20 children in the library with me of 130.

Rachelle

I cried myself to sleep for a year, thanks to a Bible in schools teacher telling my class that we were basically all going to burn to death. Not great for anxious kids… and not even great for Christianity’s goals.

Sky