SCHOOLS should no longer be obliged to organise daily religious assemblies, the head of Ofsted said yesterday.

David Bell, the Chief Inspector of Schools in England, said the requirement for an act of collective worship was no longer relevant when church attendance in society was in such decline.

He called on the Government to change the law to allow schools to hold religious assemblies as little as once a month. Inspection reports showed that three quarters of secondary schools already ignored their legal obligation to have daily worship.

The 1944 Education Act placed a duty on state schools to have a daily act of worship, which usually took the form of morning assemblies for generations of pupils. The 1988 Education Reform Act reinforced the obligation by emphasising that it should be “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character”, unless the school’s population made this unsuitable because the majority of pupils were from other faiths.

But in a speech marking the 60th anniversary of R.A. Butler’s 1944 Education Act, Mr Bell said it was difficult to justify daily religious worship in schools when society had changed so much. “I struggle, as do my inspectors and most secondary schools, with the requirement that the school day shall include an act of collective worship,” he said.

“How many people in this country, other than school children, are required to attend daily worship with others in their community?” The Department for Education and Skills responded to Mr Bell’s speech by disclosing that Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, was considering a review of guidance to schools on collective worship.

The Church of England said it would welcome a debate, but it considered collective worship “an important part of pupils’ entitlement to religious experience in education”.

Can religious worship in schools be justified?

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