Special Religious Education in New South Wales, Australia

[1][2] Time is allocated in NSW government schools for qualified SRE volunteers to teach students about their chosen religion.

Providers are required to be approved by the minister of education on the basis of a fairly simple application form.

It stated that government schools are required to involve religious teaching and instruction in the students curriculum of learning.

[11] The NSW government provides a list of groups that are permitted to enter public schools and teach various Religions.

The main Christian faith groups in order of quantity includes Evangelical, Catholic, Baptist, Anglican and Presbyterian.

Catherine Byrne, wrote for the ABC in 2010 about SRE providing religious groups with the ability "to use this access privilege to enter public schools and spend an hour each week delivering content that is important to them ... to deliver such instruction so freely, unhindered by government regulation".

[13] Additionally, a survey was taken in 2010 stating that "70 percent of parents and educators felt that SRE delivered important lessons in values".

[13] The other side of the argument shares that SRE is giving Christianity an advantage, plus parents are concerned with discrimination and segregation.

[13] In 2017, The Guardian reporter Christopher Knaus, shared peoples concern about some inappropriate topics such as abortion especially in SRe classes to young children.

The same year, Naaman Zhou reported that the NSW Labor Party at the time would be debating policy at their annual state conference on whether to remove scripture classes.

[citation needed] The Daily Telegraph shared similarly the push of removing scripture classes from schools, as some families weren't seeing the priority of it in their children's education.

[18] In 2018, The Sydney Morning Herald stated that secondary principals wanted it removed from the program because it was taking up precious time that they thought should be used on other more important learning for their students.

[19] The wish to remove SRE from NSW schools is still ongoing as news reporter stated that teachers were finding it out-dated.

[21] SRE in a recent report has been proven to be beneficial for improving mental health issues and embedding good morals in students.