British Religious Groups Urge Enforcement Of School Prayer Requirements

In Great Britain, a group of religious leaders has written the new Secretary of State for Education, Alan Johnson, urging him to make sure that secondary schools carry out their obligation to provide daily collective worship for students. Britain's School Standards and Framework Act of 1988, Sec. 70 and Schedule 20, requires daily organized school prayer that is "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character". Parents can request to have their children excused from prayer, and religiously-affiliated schools have prayer in their faiths' traditions. The religious leaders said, according to today's Guardian Unlimited, that many secondary schools are ignoring the daily worship requirement, even though it makes a "major contribution ... to the spiritual and moral development of pupils". They said that more teacher training is required and that the government needs to issue a clear statement to schools setting out their legal obligations. However the British Humanist Association has urged the education secretary to press for a change in the law that would allow schools to have more inclusive student assemblies.