The Rationalist Society of Australia has questioned the West Australian government over why its education department’s website features the propaganda line that independent and religious schools teach “values education” while not mentioning the public system’s superior secular values.

The state’s Department of Education, in presenting the different schooling options on its website, says that the independent and religious schools system provides “values-based education”.

Meanwhile, the website does not mention the word “values” on the equivalent page about public education.

In a letter to the education minister, Sabine Winton (pictured), the RSA noted that many independent and religious schools promoted values including religious-based discrimination, sectarianism, segregation, inequality, and anti-science dogmas.

“In contrast, public education promotes far superior values, such as inclusion, equal opportunity for all, non-discrimination, respect for diversity, pursuit of knowledge and science,” wrote RSA Executive Director Si Gladman.

“Why is the Department of Education promoting the ‘values-education’ propaganda claim of independent and religious schools while not referring to the superior values education on offer at public schools?”

This week, the RSA has also written to the West Australian government to ask when it would be delivering on its commitment to remove religious exemptions from the state’s Equal Opportunity Act.

In October last year, the then attorney-general John Quigley told the RSA that a re-elected Cook government would amend the Act in 2025 as part of “reforming and narrowing the religious exemptions provided under the EO Act”

In response to the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia’s (LRCWA) 2022 review of the Equal Opportunity Act, Mr Quigley committed to supporting the recommendation to strengthen equal opportunity protections for LGBTIQA+ staff and students in religious schools.

The LRCWA recommended that Western Australia follow the Victorian example and restrict discrimination in religious schools to positions where religion is an inherent job requirement. Currently, WA’s Equal Opportunity Act allows for discrimination in religious schools where it is done “in good faith in order to avoid injury to the religious susceptibilities of adherents of that religion or creed.” 

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Si Gladman is Executive Director of the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.