ECU response to National Secular Society

Today's edition of Times Higher Education (13 January 2011) features an article on ECU's Religion and belief in higher education: researching the experiences of staff and students project, which is being carried out by a team at the University of Derby. In this article, the National Secular Society raise issues about what they perceive as a pro-religious bias in the survey element of this project.

ECU's full response to these claims can be found below.

David Ruebain, Chief Executive of Equality Challenge Unit, said:

'We reject the claims from the National Secular Society that our work on religion and belief has a pro-religious bias. ECU works in partnership with higher education institutions, undertaking projects and research and providing practical support and guidance to assist institutions in meeting their legal responsibility to ensure discrimination does not take place on campus.

Our project (Religion and belief in higher education: researching the experiences of staff and students) aims to support institutions in exploring and resolving potential issues arising from the current and forthcoming requirements of the Equality Act 2010 and the current legal requirements in Northern Ireland; particularly, but not exclusively, the public sector equality duty.

This research looks to provide evidence across all religion and belief groups (including atheist and secular beliefs, and people of no religion) to assist HEIs in meeting their legal requirements for this protected characteristic. We are aware from our discussions with HEIs that this is the type of support that much of the sector is requesting. The work will prove helpful in contributing to a broad range of initiatives that help the sector meet the requirements of the Equality Act; recognising the sector's unique position in, for example, valuing freedom of speech. 

Research methods include in-depth institutional case studies and a literature review alongside the survey. The survey element of the project is not intended to be statistically representative of the general HE population. Rather, its purpose is to identify issues that exist within the sector and to explore the different experiences of staff and students in their relationships with each other and the institutions where they work and study.

The research team is well aware of the challenges of gaining a balanced response to the survey, which was developed with input from a range of HE stakeholder groups and organisations, including non-religious bodies. The survey has been disseminated widely through staff and student networks, and indeed, there has been a high response rate from respondents identifying as non-religious. We are confident that issues raised by NSS about the possible impact of religion on campus will be addressed by the research, and indeed have already been raised during the case study elements of the project.'

Further information on the Religion and belief project

• Religion and belief project page
• University of Derby Religion and belief in HE project website