The Christian Institute

The following is a statement by Colin Hart, Director of the Christian Institute:

The General Teaching Council (GTC) in England have now revised their professional code.

We are delighted to report that the GTC have made substantial changes to their code in the light of concerns that it would put pressure on Christian teachers to act against their faith.

A whole series of changes have been made.

The most drastic change for which we thank God is that the code has been stripped of its formal legal status. This is great news. It is no longer to be the statutory code of practice. It is now only an "aspirational" document.

All our concerns have been addressed except for two issues: (1) we very much regret that the word "prejudice" remains in the code. Although the GTC maintain that the context is that equal opportunities should not be prejudiced, we are concerned that the word could be taken out of context and interpreted subjectively.

(2) Any statement by a regulator is still important. The GTC maintain that the code should be not be used by employers to act against any teachers. We think it may be. We will continue to be vigilant. The threat is now very much reduced.

We have campaigned on this issue since July last year. Christian teachers respect people as people. They cannot "fully respect" differences of religious belief or sexual orientation as the code originally required.

We never saw the need for Clause 5 of the code, but the re-wording of the paragraph no longer presents the difficulties it did.

We are grateful for the way in which GTC met with us and discussed the issues. They have listened to Christian concerns and acted.

Although, as I have indicated, we remain concerned about some issues, more has been achieved than I dared to hope for.

We will be publishing a fuller analysis in due course.

Thank you for all your prayers and letters on this issue.

Colin Hart
Director
The Christian Institute