LEICESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND, September 7, 2011 (Leicester Mercury): Some schools in Leicestershire are asking the Government to change a requirement that they provide collective Christian worship every day.
Current law requires all state schools to provide a daily act of collective worship for their pupils, such as a prayer or hymns, which must be wholly or mainly of a Christian character.The only exception is where a school has an affiliation with a different faith.
After a national BBC survey suggested many state schools are ignoring their duty to provide a daily act of worship, head teachers said they do provide daily worship, but the requirement to focus on the Christian faith does not reflect today’s multi-cultural society. Therefore, they interpret the legislation from a more inclusive perspective.
Carolyn Robson is executive head at Rushey Mead School, Leicester, where 95 per cent of pupils are not Christian.”The highest percentage of pupils at Rushey Mead School are of Hindu faith, followed closely by Sikh faith,” said Ms Robson. “We interpret the law, like many schools, in a way that fits our school.We learn about and celebrate a whole range of festivals – whether it be Eid, Diwali or a Christian festival. We have a daily assembly for all our pupils in groups of around 300 which will have a moral theme – sometimes religious, sometimes not.It would be highly inappropriate for us to just look at Christian faith.”
Christopher Hassall is head of Taylor Road Primary School in St Matthew’s, Leicester, where 95 per cent of the 600 pupils are Muslim.”The law could do with looking at because we are a multi-faith society now, and particularly in Leicester, where there are large school populations where the children are not Christians.”
Hassall adds that the law can be interpreted in a general sense:”What you might call broadly Christian could be called broadly Islamic, broadly Hindu and so on, in that there are certain values, moral values specifically, that different faiths all share, such as telling the truth and helping people who are less fortunate than us.”