Supporter comments

I attended a CofE school as a child and had to watch a friend with different beliefs be excluded from many activities. As a child we didn't really understand why, and it must have been so isolating for her. School should be about togetherness and having a diverse group of friends and experiences. Excluding one person so obviously both sets her apart and sends the message that it’s OK to exclude people in life because of their beliefs. No child should feel isolated or left behind at school.

When I was involved with challenging this in an Edinburgh school in 1970, little did I think that the outdated practice would still be in place almost 50 years later. This is a coercive procedure which over-rules the children’s rights. If it was proposed that children should be prepared to recite parts of the manifestos of the Communist or Labour Parties this would never be tolerated, so the Compulsory Christian Assembly should be similarly banned.

As a person of no religious belief and a father of three primary school age children, I have found it highly disconcerting when my children come home and tell me they've been made to pray to a Christian God, had a religious minister take their assembly or that they've been taken to a church service. Also, whether in the classroom, assembly, or church they are regularly told religious faith statements as fact and encouraged to do Christian projects to drill this into their minds. My children have moved schools twice because of our jobs and moving home. The picture is the same at every school. We have atheist and Muslim friends who all find Christian worship very uncomfortable as like us they don't want their children indoctrinated but also don't want them shamed and segregated by walking out from prayer like a walk of shame. Faith-based unscientific religious indoctrination and their supernatural rituals have no place in schools. Please get it out!

I was relieved our children have access to a non-religious community school. This turned to dismay when I found out about worship including a vicar attending school assemblies 3 times a year and church (dis)service at Xmas. It’s infuriating and outdated and should be stopped now.

It is a disgraceful state of affairs that worship is still a feature of school assemblies. As a retired teacher, I have considerable experience of assemblies being hijacked for evangelical Christian worship by the hierarchy in a 'community' school. This brainwashing of young minds (whatever background or culture) to accept and believe unsubstantiated fantasies must not continue. Freedom from biased, partisan, and coercive forms of worship is essential to allow young minds to think freely and develop a more reasoned and evidence-based world view.

My granddaughter is greatly distressed at having to 'say prayers' to something she does not believe in...she feels her right are being abused!

I find it tragic that I had to choose between allowing my children to be exposed daily to indoctrination by the church or making them objects of remark by withdrawing them from assemblies - and now those children are having to make the same decisions in regard to their own children.

Worship can only mean anything when it is practised voluntarily. Compulsory worship is at best meaningless and at worst dangerous.