The government has published a response to a petition to 10 Downing Street on Removing Collective Worship from non-faith schools.
All community, foundation or voluntary schools MUST offer a daily act of collective worship which is broadly of a Christian character in keeping with the religious traditions of this country.
Schools can apply to the SACRE ... to have the requirement for collective worship lifted [So it's NOT compulsory like you just said after all?]
... if it is not appropriate for the pupils in their school. [So christian worship is appropriate in a non-faith school?]
... collective worship provides the ... unique opportunity to [do all sorts of other things that are not worship! that could be done in other non-unique ways]
Parents have the right to withdraw their child from collective worship [but only by creating a hullaballoo, and singling their child out for special bullying.]
How ridiculous!
ReplyDeleteI'm all for communal get together, secular "thought for the day" type assemblies, but worship? Who or what, and why?
I always informed my son's primary schools that we weren't religious and were given the option of withdrawing him from assembly. I choose not to do this as I felt that we could counteract any influence of daily worship by discussion but could not be there to help him if he was singled out for ridicule or worse; he was at that age, too young.
ReplyDeleteWe so need to remove this dilemma that face parents, the choice between their children listening to a load of codswallop or discrimination in classroom/playground!!