619. The right to be educated in accordance with parental convictions.

The second element of Article 2 of Protocol 11 requires the state to respect the religious and philosophical convictions of parents, and thus creates an obvious link between the right to education and the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion2. Its purpose is to safeguard the possibility of pluralism in education, a possibility that the European Court of Human Rights has held to be essential for the preservation of the 'democratic society' as conceived by the European Convention on Human Rights