SECULARIST campaigners have welcomed Pembrokeshire County Council’s decision to remove the Voluntary Controlled status from Cilgerran Church in Wales VC School and convert it to a school without a religious designation, following a consultation.

Welcoming the move, the NSS praised the council’s “secular approach to education” as the “best means of ensuring publicly funded schools are equally welcoming to all children, regardless of their backgrounds.”

The NSS added: “Schools we all pay for should be managed in the best interests of everyone, not used as a vehicle for the agenda of religious institutions”.

The 2021 census revealed ‘nonreligious’ to be the largest belief group in Wales at 47 per cent of the population, with the number of ‘Christians’ at 44 per cent.

As part of the consultation, PCC argued that changing the school’s designation would help secure long-term sustainability by allowing for future federation with one or more local community schools, something precluded by Cilgerran’s VC status.

The Church in Wales has initiated legal proceedings, claiming “public misrepresentation and unqualified legal assertions” by council officers, and “discrimination against faith schooling”.

Whilst VC schools are funded by the local authority, Cilgerran’s land is owned by the Diocese of St Davids. The Church states that it “will not agree” to PCC “occupying the premises for the purposes of a community school”.

At VC schools, legally mandated collective worship must adhere to the school’s designated character, teachers can be hired, promoted, and disciplined on the basis of religious tests, and governing bodies include representatives of the relevant religious institution.

Although VC schools tend not to select on the basis of religion in their admissions, it is lawful for them to do so.

The NSS campaigns for publicly funded faith schools to be phased out, and for religiously selective admissions to be abolished.