COMPULSORY RELIGION IS OUT OF DATE

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Compulsory religion is out of date

The findings of a survey suggest many schools are failing to meet their legal obligation to provide pupils with a daily act of worship.

This is not surprising as an Ofsted report a few years ago found only one quarter of schools comply with the requirement. The new survey also found that the majority of respondents – 60 per cent – did not believe a daily act of worship should be enforced.

Given that the law is being widely ignored and most people do not care, is it not time to change it and drop this requirement?

And while we are on the subject, could the same not be said for the obligation placed upon schools to provide religious education?

We have the greatest respect for those who regard religious faith as important. However, that increasingly does not apply to a large proportion of the population who would regard themselves as agnostic, if not atheist.

It would therefore make more sense for schools to make their own decisions, based on the background of their pupils and their own ethos, over issues such as daily acts of worship and whether to teach religious education.

Clearly, religious schools, and the number of these are growing, would want to do these things. Other schools in areas where there are large numbers of religious families might want to do so also.

That would allow parents for whom faith is important to choose accordingly.

However, in an increasingly secular society where many people clearly regard religion as having little or no importance to them, it is surely pointless to tell all schools to have daily acts of worship and teach religious education.