Secular alternative to Christian school assemblies debated in House of Lords

A Bill to scrap Christian assemblies in non-faith schools has failed to secure Government support.

Debated at Second Reading in the House of Lords, the Education (Assemblies) Bill was put forward by the Lib Dem Baroness Burt, the vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group and a patron of Humanists UK.

It will now proceed to Committee Stage, however both the Education Minister Baroness Smith and the Shadow Education Minister Baroness Barran spoke against the Bill. Without Government support, it is likely the Bill will fail as it did in 2021.

‘Principal religion’

Under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, state-funded schools in England and Wales must conduct acts of collective worship that are “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character”.

The Bill seeks to replace this requirement with a secular alternative to further the “spiritual, moral, social and cultural education of the pupils” for schools not labelled as having a “religious character”.

Education Minister Baroness Smith of Malvern said the Government did not see “a need to amend the current legislation on collective worship”. She added: “Despite Britain’s increasingly diverse religious landscape, Christianity remains the principal religion.”

Lady Barran also commented: “The Judeo-Christian principles, which I am sure we could have many good debates about, underpin our culture and have withstood the test of time. We unravel at our peril that understanding and shared sense of who we are as a community, and the commonality across religions of some of those principles.”

Secular alternatives

In 2022, humanist headteacher, Jo Conner failed in her attempt to obtain an exemption from the collective worship requirement to replace it with the controversial pro-LGBT ‘No Outsiders’ programme.

Also, when ‘No Outsiders’ was introduced at a school in Birmingham, parents complained the lessons were used to promote homosexual and transgender lifestyles.

The school halted the scheme following parents’ protests, but ran a modified version called ‘No Outsiders for a faith community’ from September 2019.