Plans to prevent parents removing their children from religious education lessons violate human rights, the National Secular Society has said.

The proposal to review the right of parents to excuse their children from RE at school on grounds of "conscience" came from the Religious Education Council this week.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said the proposals were “disgusting” and “outrageous” and contravened human rights law. “It’s your human right to educate your children according to whatever religion you want to, so it is a human right if you don’t want to have your children educated in a religion.”

Mr Sanderson said religious education in Britain was in effect indoctrination, “it’s not about religion, it is teaching children how to worship, how to go to church, how to sing the songs.”

The National Strategy for Religious Education, funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), proposes to make it illegal for parents to remove their children from religious education lessons.

At present, all state schools in the UK are required to teach religious education as part of the national curriculum but parents can opt to take their children out of lessons. But the strategy proposes a review of the right of parents to withdraw their children from religious education as a matter of "conscience" .

Professor Brian Gates, Chair of the Religious Education Council said religious education was crucial to answer the questions children and young people have about faith and belief, "this is fundamental to a good education, it's about learning from the wisdom of other faiths."

The professor said extreme right-wing political organisations and "closed minded" groups may be abusing the right to remove their children from lessons about religion. “The world requires a degree of religious understanding if people are to be able to discern what is going on in the world.”

The organisation also recommended that the Government review its guidance to schools on collective worship in assemblies. Currently it is a legal requirement for schools to offer daily acts of collective worship. But Professor Gates said most secondary schools were finding this difficult to achieve.