ABSTRACT
The rationale for individual interest-represented chiefly by parental interest-in the substantive contents of the secular curriculum in schools, and the methods and style of teaching, is perhaps relatively easy to see, and it may be that there is a rather greater degree of political consensus in this context than in the other major areas of controversy examined in this book (though political conflict here is by no means absent). As a starting point one should certainly consider the centrality of the impact of the nature and substance of the curriculum upon the entire development of the child, as discussed in chapter 1. It is this central role of the substantive education provided at school which is the essential foundation for parental concern in this context, a concern which may be argued to have the attributes of a fundamental human right to exercise at least some degree of involvement in or even control over the content of the education provided in accordance with the parent’s personal conscience. On grounds of practicality, however, few would argue that this right should be absolute, although some would certainly argue in favour of an absolute right in a liberal democracy to ‘alternative’ education outside the state sector, either in independent schools or at home, subject to suitable inspection by state agencies.1 Given the fundamental nature of parental concern here, it is to be expected that the provisions of Article 2 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights requiring education in conformity with parents’ religious and philosophical convictions would have some real force in this context, and we shall examine some of the relevant caselaw in the context of sex education below. The Protocol has also been invoked in the context of religious education, though that falls outside the scope of this discussion.
