UNITED KINGDOM, April 3, 2009: The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said schools should be free to celebrate Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh religious festivals every few weeks instead of staging a daily assembly and singing hymns.
Under existing legislation, all state schools in England and Wales are supposed to have daily worship of a “broadly Christian character”. Parents can pull children out but pupils themselves do not have the power to withdraw from assemblies.
At the ATL annual conference in Liverpool next week, teachers will call for existing legislation to be scrapped. Speaking ahead of the meeting, Gareth Lewis, a member of the union’s ruling executive in Wales, said: “Children should be exposed to worship, but forcing them to take part in a religious assembly every day just devalues the whole concept. It is an antiquated rule. “Schools should decide if or when they want to hold worship and it should be tailored towards different faiths at different times of the year.”