The government is planning to “update” its guidance on collective worship in England’s schools after the Supreme Court ruled the delivery of the practice in Northern Ireland was unlawful.
However, the UK Department for Education said it had “no plans to change the law”, which requires a daily act of collective worship that is “broadly Christian in nature”.
In the Northern Ireland case, the Supreme Court ruled the Christian-centric religious education (RE) and collective worship delivered in the country’s schools breached the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) because it was not delivered “in an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner”.
The United Kingdom’s Department for Education (DfE) has now confirmed plans to “update” its own guidance on collective worship “to reflect the current legal framework”, including ECHR requirements.
All state-funded schools in England are required to deliver “a daily act of collective worship which is broadly Christian in nature”.
Current guidance is over 30 years old
But the DfE has confirmed plans to “update the guidance”, which dates back to 1994.
“Collective worship plays an important role in schools and helps encourage pupils to reflect on the concept of belief and the role it plays in the traditions and values of this country,” said a DfE spokesperson today. They added government has “no plans to change the law”.
“However, we recognise the need to update the guidance to make expectations clear and the need for collective worship to be objective, critical and pluralistic,” they added.
“We understand this is sensitive and will be working closely with partners and stakeholders to get this right.”
The DfE has not specified the changes it plans to make.
Currently, non-faith schools can seek an exemption from the requirement for daily worship to be Christian in nature, while faith schools can provide collective worship in line with their religion.
Parents also have an “unconditional right” to withdraw their children from collective worship, while sixth-formers can withdraw themselves.
Calls for collective worship to be removed
But some argue that in an increasingly secular society, daily acts of worship should no longer be required in schools.
Census data shows less than half the population of England and Wales (46.2 per cent) identified as Christian as of 2021 – a drop from 59.3 per cent in 2011. However, Christians remained the biggest proportion of respondents.
This was followed by “no religion” (37.2 per cent). Meanwhile, 6.5 per cent described themselves as Muslim, and 1.7 per cent as Hindu.
The National Secular Society (NSS) has long argued the law requiring daily acts of worship should be scrapped entirely.
CEO Stephen Evans said: “Objective, critical and pluralistic worship is a contradiction in terms.
“The legal requirement for a daily act of broadly Christian worship in schools conflicts with children’s freedom of belief and is a relic of a bygone age that should be removed from the statute book.
“While we will engage constructively on guidance to make schools more inclusive, ministers should be clear that no amount of revised guidance can fix a fundamentally outdated law.”
What happened in Northern Ireland?
Article 9 of the EHCR guarantees everyone “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion”.
Meanwhile Article 2 of protocol 1 (A2P1) states: “No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”
The Northern Ireland case related to a girl from a non-religious household who attended a primary school in Belfast. As part of the curriculum, she took part in “Christian religious education and collective worship”.
The girl’s parents “did not wish her to be taught that Christianity was an absolute truth”.
But her father reported she began to believe “that God made the world, and she repeats and practices a prayer…taught at school”. He grew concerned his daughter was “learning Christianity and not learning ‘about’ Christianity”.
Her father challenged the legality of the RE and collective worship, with a judicial review against Northern Ireland’s Department of Education. The case relates not only to the school itself, but to wider practice across Northern Ireland’s education system.
Worship ‘not conveyed in objective manner’
This challenge was successful in the High Court in 2022, where the judge found the RE and collective worship “were not conveyed in an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner”.
The hearing also looked at whether the parents’ statutory right to withdraw their daughter was sufficient to prevent the ECHR breach. The judge found it did not, as it “placed an undue burden” on the parents, who were deterred from withdrawing their daughter over fears she could be stigmatised.
The judge ruled the school’s RE and collective worship breached the girl and her father’s rights.
Northern Ireland’s DfE then challenged this ruling at the Court of Appeal.
There, judges upheld the finding the RE and collective worship were not “objective, critical, and pluralistic”. But they disagreed with the finding that the parents’ statutory right to withdraw their daughter was insufficient to prevent a breach of the EHCR.
‘Valid concerns’
They said the state “was not pursuing the forbidden aim of indoctrination”. They also “very much doubted that fears of stigmatisation or of an undue burden on [the child’s] parents would have been realised in practice”.
The family then appealed to the Supreme Court, challenging this conclusion.
At the Supreme Court in November, judges unanimously allowed the appeal. They also dismissed a cross-appeal from the DfE.
They acknowledged the parents’ “valid concerns in relation to withdrawing” their daughter from RE and collective worship.
They also found the Court of Appeal “fell into error in making a distinction between indoctrination, and the state conveying information…in a manner which was not objective, critical, and pluralistic”, describing these as “two sides of the same coin”.
“Conveying knowledge in a manner that is not objective, critical, and pluralistic amounts to pursuing the aim of indoctrination,” they ruled.
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