How a religious request at Newtown High upended the timetable

Résumé détaillé

Parents are annoyed at how a Christian organisation upended the timetable at Newtown High, with students losing 80 minutes of class time a fortnight.

Hundreds of Newtown High School of the Performing Arts students are spending 80 minutes each fortnight doing activities such as colouring-in with pencils under teacher supervision after the school was forced to add special religious education lessons to the timetable.

The situation at Newtown High began four years ago after a request from some parents to introduce special religious education classes. Over the past two years, Anglican organisation Youthworks had been in discussions with the school.

Under NSW legislation, a school cannot refuse to offer special religious education classes and NSW Department of Education policy states students who are not enrolled in religion lessons “cannot participate in school curriculum lessons or other extracurricular activities during this time”.

Those rules now mean 94 per cent of Newtown High students from years 7 to 10 (or 703 students) who are not enrolled in Christianity lessons have been blocked from learning curriculum content. Extracurricular activities are also banned during this time.

Under the change, students are set to lose an entire week’s worth of learning time over a full school year. The move has prompted the creation of a WhatsApp group, and a meeting was held at the school on Tuesday evening.

Newtown High’s P&C president Lassity Martin said effectively taking away 80 minutes of learning time each fortnight contravened NSW Education Department warnings about missing even a small amount of school and the importance of attendance.

“It flies in the face of other initiatives … I find it very confusing,” she said.

She said she respected the right to offer religious education at schools as mandated by the legislation, but could not understand why the department’s policies appeared to go a step further to prohibit children from carrying on normal lessons.

“I absolutely support parents and students who choose to attend special religious education,” she said.

Début de l'article, extrait de The Sydney Morning Herald. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.