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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how accurate it is to say this is for "all UK schools" as education is pretty heavily devolved in the UK - Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales all have their own counterparts to the Department of Education:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_for_Education#Devolu...

NB As an aside, from a UK perspective the title is a bit confusing as "public schools" are private schools here. "State schools" would probably be more accurate - even if there are 4 "states" involved.... :-)

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If you read the article it applies to all the schools that take government money.

Which government though - we have three parts of the UK with different levels of devolution:

- The Northern Ireland Executive

- Welsh Government

- Scottish Government

[NB I was careful to get the name of the institutions correct - the Welsh and Scottish bodies are styled "governments"]

Edit: Mind you - I rather wish it did apply here in Scotland!

I doubt this will extend to the North of Ireland. We have a disproportionately large evangelical Christian contingent that extends to the (current) largest party in the Executive, which would aim to block it. The education ministry is held by Sinn Féin, though, who would pass it.

It does say that, but news organisations are notoriously poor at articulating the constitutional situation in the UK.

In this case, for example, the move has no effect on Scotland - the education system there is totally devolved, and AFAIK there's no concept of the "free school" or academy model which has been introduced in England and Wales. I'm not sure about the situation in Northern Ireland.

The Scottish Secular Society has been campaigning for a similar ban in Scotland - this will probably happen at some point, although my experience suggests that there's not as much of a problem there anyway.

We do have problems related to religion in education - particularly around sectarianism:

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/supportinglearners/posit...

Huh. I didn't know any of that. Sorry for my dismissive reply.

The source it quotes is specifically for new Academies and free schools. Those already established are not, I believe, affected.

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