Funding for ‘bible colleges’ challenged over free speech concerns

Funding for ‘Bible colleges’ challenged over free speech concerns

Religious institutions’ governing documents incompatible with OfS rules, says secular society

五月 9, 2025

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Campaigners have called for religious colleges’ access to student loan funding to be reviewed, with their focus on spiritual beliefs and values said to be incompatible with the English sector regulator’s approach to academic freedom.

Members of the National Secular Society (NSS), an organisation that promotes the separation of church and state, have said it is “absurd” that the Office for Students (OfS) is fining universities for alleged free speech breaches while allowing higher education institutions aligned with religions on its register.

At least 10 of these colleges – typically Christian and offering degrees mainly focused on theology – are registered with the OfS, allowing their students to access government-backed loans.

Under the regulator’s public interest governance principles, registered providers must uphold academic freedom and freedom of speech.?The regulator is also set to gain new powers in August that will allow people to lodge free speech complaints against institutions.?

However, the governing statements of the religious colleges, which are published by the Charity Commission as many also operate as charities, expressly state their aim to promote Christianity – something the NSS sees as in contravention of academic freedom.

Moorlands College, for example, a Dorset-based institution that offers courses such as a BA in applied theology,??are to “maintain, advance and promote the Christian religion by the conduct of a college or colleges for the study and teaching of the Bible, Christian doctrine and related subjects and by the training of ministers of religion”.?

In another case, Birmingham Christian College, a fully owned subsidiary of the Church of Pentecost,??as to “promote the advancement of the Christian faith in the United Kingdom and elsewhere by spreading the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ”.?

“Many of these organisations call themselves colleges but are actually churches,” said Chris Higgins, a member of the NSS’ secular education forum and former vice-chancellor of Durham University.?

“The public sector is giving money designed for education directly to churches, and those churches are governed by pastors…whose primary loyalty is to the church and its beliefs, not to education.”

In 2024, Moorlands College received ?1,022,484 in fee income for taught degree programmes, as well as ?27,631 in grant income from the OfS.?

These institutions appear to mandate that students and staff adhere to Christian beliefs and values – a requirement the NSS believes prevents academic freedom and freedom of speech.?

A??on Moorlands College’s website, which was active as recently as October 2024, said: “Discipleship is at the centre of the College’s vision. We long to see our students’ commitment to Jesus and love for God and people deepen and strengthen through their time at the College. The Bible is the basis of our teaching and action.”

The NSS first reported these colleges to the OfS in 2021 but believes little action has been taken. The OfS’ policy on third-party notifications states it will not update notifiers on any actions taken or investigations launched as a result of a report.?

However, in January 2025, Arif Ahmed, director for freedom of speech and academic freedom at the OfS, and David Behan, interim chair of the OfS, met with Higgins, NSS member Keith Sharpe, a retired professor of education, and another NSS representative.

Ahmed then sent a letter to the group requesting another meeting to “understand in more detail” the concerns raised.?

This letter was sent weeks before the sector regulator?issued a record fine?to the University of Sussex for breaching its free speech duties in connection to its handling of the resignation of its professor, Kathleen Stock. The regulator rebuked the institution over an equality policy that required trans people to be “positively represented”.

“It is patently absurd to fine the University of Sussex for restricting freedom of speech in an internal policy document which could readily have been amended, while ignoring Bible colleges, whose foundation governing documents explicitly place a blanket restriction on freedom of speech and academic freedom,” Higgins and Sharpe said in a statement.?

The OfS said it was unable to comment on individual institutions.?

“Individual cases will depend on the facts,” a regulator spokesperson said. “However, we expect all universities and colleges registered with the OfS to ensure that they meet our conditions of registration and, from 1 August 2025, the duties to secure and promote free speech under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023.”

Moorlands College and Birmingham Christian College were contacted for comment.

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com

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Reader's comments (9)

#1 Submitted by ... on May 9, 2025 - 8:02am

There must be a major conflict between the 'colleges' of several major world religions and things like free speech, Trans, LGBT rights, wo,men's righs etc etc. I'll be interested to see how the 'academic opinion body' squares all this.

#2 Submitted by ... on May 9, 2025 - 9:01am

Prima facie it is quite wrong for the public purse to be funding institutions the primary purpose of which is to promote an ideological world view, which, in this case, many people would simply consider as false and absurd. Such institutions should be funded by donations, the wealth of their individual churches. It's a moot point whether they should be charitable trusts and have tax relief. It's not just this of course, we also have the explicit attempts by certain faiths to re-introduce a law of blasphemy abolished by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act of 2008. I am all for the academic study of human belief systems as an objective analytical enquiry, but an institution which claims 'The Bible is the basis of our teaching and action' really is a Church and not a College

#3 Submitted by stephen... on May 9, 2025 - 9:34am

"Certain faiths". Why so shy to name them/it?

#4 Submitted by ... on May 10, 2025 - 9:43am

Because they are all as bad as each other. Thought my favourite are the devotees of the God, Quetzalcoatl. At least they were honest and unabashed.

#5 Submitted by m.... on May 9, 2025 - 1:10pm

This is silly. What is the point of "free speech" if it is not permitted to promote one's faith? The only problem would come if colleges of one religion were to be supported and colleges of another were not. This is merely the self-styled humanists trying to force their world view on to other people. So much for supporting free speech.

#6 Submitted by ... on May 10, 2025 - 6:32am

Well I do feel that this is very unfair. We are talking about the issue of the pubic funding of faith groups via the educational system. I don't want to impose any views on anyone unlike those who claim access to a divine revelation they feel bound to propagate for good or ill (usually il) for which there is actually no evidential basis. Surely it is the other way around?

#7 Submitted by ... on May 10, 2025 - 10:50am

You can promote your own faith whatever it maybe. You may believe in the Toothfairy if you want and evangelise their works. But you should not be funded by the state to do so as part of the higher education system. The French I think do this so much better with the separation of state and church and their robust insistence on secularism in the realm of the state, where faith is a private thing left to the individual. Indeed, I also think that this funding of faith-based education (whether in this case through higher education or tax concessions for faith based schools) is itself segregationist and encourages sectarianism and intolerance. It builds up barriers between people and encourages cultural misunderstanding. If we want to combat these things we should end all forms of religious segregation and privileges. The key thing here I think is to what extent the state should be subsidising the promulgation of religious ideologies, which many people find problematic as part of the UK educational system. There is no free speech problem with that. I hear and meet religious people and groups everywhere, proselytising in the streets, singing in choirs, and even speaking win the House of Lords where the unelected Lords Spiritual sit by established right (God knows how anyone justifies that) and goos for them all!! . No-one is stopping them, it's just that the state should not be paying for it, it has other priorities (child poverty, education in general, the health system, housing, the care system etc etc).

#8 Submitted by ... on May 10, 2025 - 11:27am

'Self-styled humanist forcing their world view on other people'! Have you heard of the Spanish Inquisition to take just one in a very very long line of cases from medieval to the contemporary world?

new

#9 Submitted by m.... on May 14, 2025 - 2:38pm

Interesting that all of those disagreeing with my opinion that trying to exclued faith institutions is in itself an attack on free speech include anti-religous remarks in their comments.