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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/academies-move-may-break-eu-laws.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="Michael Gove has been warned that the Government may be breaking EU employment laws by letting schools become academies" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/min-academies-move-may-break-eu-laws.jpg" alt="Michael Gove has been warned that the Government may be breaking EU employment laws by letting schools become academies"/></a></p>
<p>Michael Gove has been warned the Government may be breaking EU employment laws in allowing schools to become academies.</p>
<p>The National Secular Society claims the Education Secretary&#8217;s plans are in breach of legal obligations to protect teachers from religious discrimination.</p>
<p>Mr Gove announced plans last year to allow all primary, secondary and special schools in England to apply for academy status.</p>
<p>There are now 442 academies across the country, of which 171 are schools that have converted following Mr Gove&#8217;s announcement.</p>
<p>But the National Secular Society says it has taken legal advice which concluded that the transfer of community and faith schools is in breach of the EU employment directive.</p>
<p>Non-religious staff in community state schools have statutory protections against discrimination on the grounds of their religion, or lack of it, the society said. This includes the right not to have to take religious education lessons or conduct religious assemblies.</p>
<p>It claimed that this protection is lost if a school becomes an academy. The society added that there is also currently a 20% limit in the proportion of staff that a faith school controlled by the local authority can require to be religious.</p>
<p>It claimed that under the Education Bill making its way through Parliament, this limit would be raised to 100%, removing protections for non-religious staff. The society said it has written to both the Government and the European Commission setting out its findings and to make a formal complaint.</p>
<p>Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: &#8220;The statutory protections on which the jobs of hundreds of thousands of non-religious teaching and support staff depend will be clandestinely removed when they transfer to academies, the new norm.&#8221;</p>
<p>The society said that the advice it had received from a law firm specialising in education concluded: &#8220;in respect of each of voluntary aided, voluntary controlled (the two main types of faith school) and community schools converting into academies, there are strong grounds to believe that the Government&#8217;s proposals are a breach of its legal obligations to protect teachers (and others) from discrimination on the grounds of religious belief, set out in the firective.&#8221;</p>
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