Sean's blog

Religion-free state education in the UK

We recently returned to the UK with two young children from a financially cavalier extended ‘babymoon’ in Malaysia. Part of the impetus to move back again was my reluctance to put my children through the Malaysian state education system which emphasises racist division and religious practice, though possibly not in that order and with the caveat that they may not be two discrete issues.

Late to the UK school admissions process, we used our local Schools Admissions department’s School Transfer scheme to state 3 preferences for schools for our school-aged child. The online mapping service was very useful – we could easily see where were the nearby schools and follow the provided links to Ofsted reports and to the schools’ own websites where they existed.

What was quickly apparent was that very many local infant schools were church-linked. I don’t want a church-linked education for my children, just an education. Our number one preference (we chose 3 schools which were not explicitly church-linked) offered our daughter a place, and we were delighted with the school when the head teacher gave us a tour around it. The school is in a ‘federation’ with another infant school which is church linked and has the same name as the one our daughter will attend but with “Church of England” in its title.

This morning I read an article on the BBC website about State schools ‘not providing group worship’ and wondered why this should be news in a modern world. This quote stood out:

The Department for Education states that all maintained schools in England must provide a daily act of collective worship which must reflect the traditions of this country, which it says are, in the main, broadly Christian

Anxious to verify this obligation, I searched and found the same thing on the Department of Education’s website. So it appears to me that I don’t have a choice to send my child to a non-church school: all schools are obliged to ‘provide a daily act of collective worship’.

I am shocked to discover this is the case in the UK, which I have always – perhaps occasionally in the face of evidence to the contrary – protested was a secular democracy. It seems to me (if the statistics presented in the BBC’s article are to be believed) that I am likely not alone in preferring my children receive an education that does not by default include religious indoctrination.

I’m not quite sure what to do with this new information, and thought I’d put a message in a bottle to see where it might wash up. Did you know about this obligation on schools? What do you think about a ‘right to withdraw’? Does it seem to you that children should instead have a right to a basic education which is free from religious indoctrination?

I see no other reasonable way of interpreting “a daily act of [broadly Christian] collective worship” other than as religious indoctrination. I see news about ‘free schools’ starting which must be about to provide a daily act of non-Christian collective worship and I fear that the UK is starting down a path which can only lead to deeper divisions and greater social tension. Social cohesion is something our children can learn at school, even (or perhaps particularly) if it isn’t explicitly taught as a discrete concept.

I would be interested in the opinions of other parents.