We want to see laws requiring schools to hold acts of worship abolished.
The laws are archaic, unnecessary and breach children's freedom of religion or belief.
The United Kingdom is the only Western democracy which legally imposes worship in publicly funded schools.
The law in England and Wales provides that children at all maintained schools "shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship". Northern Ireland and Scotland have similar laws.
Even in schools with no religious designation, the worship must be "wholly or mainly of a Christian character".
School assemblies are an important feature of school life. They foster a sense of community in schools and promote the moral and social development of pupils. But acts of worship are neither necessary nor desirable to achieve these educational goals.
Polling has found 70% of senior teachers "disagree" or "strongly disagree" with the law mandating worship, and 66% of teachers say their school does not even hold collective worship.
The majority of the public (52%) say school assemblies should be about moral issues, whereas just 26% agree that they should feature religious worship.
Many schools ignore the law, but where it is enforced it causes division and discrimination, as well as opening the door to evangelism and proselytising.
Parents have the right to withdraw children from collective worship, but many this is an unreasonable imposition on both themselves and their children. Parents should never have to withdraw their children from any part of the school day to ensure their rights to raise their child according to their own religious or philosophical convictions are respected.
Collective worship laws are outdated relics of a society unrecognisable from the diverse and pluralistic Britain of today, where citizens hold a wide variety of religious beliefs, and increasingly, no religious beliefs. The abolition of collective worship is long overdue.
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Latest updates
Teachers: End “archaic and discriminatory” collective worship
Posted: Tue, 6 Dec 2022 08:53
Teachers have called for the "archaic and discriminatory" law on collective worship to be scrapped following last week's census results.
Quoted in The Guardian, Nikki McGee, head of Religious Education at 18 schools in Norfolk, said collective worship is "pretty much meaningless".
She added last week's census results, which showed for the first time that the majority in England and Wales are not Christian, rendered the collective worship requirement "archaic". The results have also led to renewed calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England, the abolition of the bishop's bench and the removal of the monarch as head of the Church.
Adding to Ms McGee's comments, Mark Shepstone, assistant head of a Bungay High School in Suffolk, said the practice was "simply ignored" in many schools and the law should now be changed. "In the schools I have worked in since 2007, there's never been a daily act of collective worship," he noted.
The head of a school in south-west England, who wished to remain anonymous, added schools "fudged" the law: "We all dance around it, but in truth it's not collective worship. It's more like group pastoral messaging."
Mandatory daily collective worship in state schools is enshrined in the Education Act 1944. It must be of a "broadly Christian character" and students under the age of 16 cannot withdraw themselves without parental permission.
The teachers' calls echo the message of Graeme Nixon, a Religious and Moral Education teacher in Scotland, who advocated in the Times Educational Supplement last week for an end to Religious Observance in Scottish schools.
Russell Sandberg, professor of law and religion at Cardiff University, added the law is "stuck in the 1940s" and is "utterly archaic and discriminatory". He remarked politicians had been reluctant to change the law because of "the historical power of religion".
Nonetheless, he argued reform is necessary as the law "breaches children's human rights because they have no choice."
His comments follow a July 2022 decision by the High Court of Northern Ireland that the country's arrangements for Religious Education and collective worship breached the European Convention on Human Rights due to their exclusive focus on Christianity.
In August, Poulner Infant School's application for an exemption from collective worship - on the grounds that only one third of its student body is Christian - was rejected. Despite this, the Department for Education continues to claim that schools "are able to tailor their provision to suit their pupils' needs."
And this month, West Sussex County Council's standing advisory council on religious education (SACRE) refused to discuss encouraging "fully inclusive assemblies" in place of collective worship at local schools after this was raised by a humanist SACRE member.
The National Secular Society, which campaigns for an end to collective worship laws, wrote to the parliamentary Education Select Committee in October requesting a review on the collective worship requirement in schools in England.
NSS: 'The moral and legal case against collective worship has always been clear'
NSS campaigns officer Alejandro Sanchez said: "The damning conclusions of these teachers show collective worship legislation is wildly out of step with British society and increasingly ignored.
"Last week's census results bring the absurdity of collective worship into even sharper relief.
"While the moral and legal case against collective worship has always been clear, the news that we are officially no longer a Christian country only increases the urgent need for reform."
NSS calls for parliamentary committee to review collective worship
Posted: Thu, 13 Oct 2022 16:17
The National Secular Society has called on a parliamentary select committee to investigate compulsory worship in schools.
The NSS wrote to the Education Select Committee today requesting a review on the collective worship requirement in schools in England and the "government's intransigence" on the issue.
Laws in England and Wales require that children at all state schools "shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship".
Although schools with a religious character must conduct such worship in accordance with the practices of the school's designated faith, in schools without a religious character the law requires that worship must be "wholly or mainly of a Christian character".
The government has previously described the law as "flexible and inclusive, allowing all schools to tailor their provision to suit pupils' needs", because schools may apply to hold collective worship reflecting other religious traditions.
But the NSS said the government's claim is undermined by the case of Poulner Infant School, which recently had its request to be exempt from collective worship laws denied.
The school had argued the requirement for collective worship to be of a Christian character was inappropriate on the grounds that two thirds of parents do not identify as Christian, that parents of no religion are the largest single group, and that many parents purposefully seek out the school as an alternative to nearby faith schools.
The NSS also referred to a 2021 letter from then-Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the School System Baroness Berridge which confirmed that it is "not permissible for a school to apply simply to replace Christian or other religious collective worship with a non-religious assembly" This arrangement fails to "provide sufficient flexibility for the schools where growing numbers of children, young people and parents are nonreligious or religiously unconcerned", the NSS said.
Despite this apparent contradiction between the government's statements, ministers at the Department for Education (DfE) have repeatedly said there are "no plans to amend or repeal the legal duty on schools to provide a daily act of collective worship".
The NSS also argued that current laws requiring collective worship are in conflict with human rights obligations, a position which is shared by the United Nations Committee on the Right of the Child
And in July the High Court of Northern Ireland found that the law on collective worship and religious education there breached human rights laws, because it was not sufficiently critical or pluralist.
NSS: 'Time to end collective worship'
Jack Rivington, campaigns officer at the NSS, said: "Laws mandating collective worship in schools are an anachronism and totally inappropriate in modern British society. The government's insistence that current legislation is flexible, inclusive, and enables schools to adapt their provision to reflect the needs of pupils is also one clearly not supported by the facts.
"The continuation of a policy requiring collective worship shows contempt for human rights and freedom of religion and belief. The time is long overdue for these laws to be scrapped."
Image: davidf, Shutterstock
