Religious worship in schools

Sixth-form pupils in England and Wales and parents on behalf of younger pupils have an absolute right to withdraw from compulsory collective worship. In Northern Ireland, only parents have a right to withdraw. In Scotland children and young people cannot choose to opt out of religious observance, and the Humanist Society of Scotland is campaigning to replace this with an opt-in model.

In demanding collective worship in schools which will typically have pupils from a wide variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds, the law is incoherent: a school can do many things collectively but, lacking a shared religious faith, it cannot worship collectively. It also ignores the right of children too young to withdraw themselves to freedom of belief and conscience. And no meaningful alternative must be offered to children withdrawn. This is a breach of their and their parents’ human rights.

Indeed, in 2025 the Supreme Court In 2025 the Supreme Court ruled, in a case known as JR87, that an exclusively Christian RE and collective worship was ‘indoctrination’. The Court also ruled that the right of withdrawal is clearly stigmatising. Although the case was about Northern Ireland, the ruling has significant implications on collective worship in England and Wales as the law is precisely the same. As a result, collective worship is now under review in both NI and England.

Complaints about collective worship in schools remain the largest single category of casework we receive at Humanists UK. We want the requirement for collective worship to be repealed, and replaced by a requirement for inclusive assemblies, which promote the spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development of all pupils, without discriminating against them based on their beliefs. We’ve been working towards this through, for example, seeking to amend relevant Government bills in Parliament, taking legal action, and rallying support for reform.

In depth

Schools without a religious character can apply for exemption from the ‘broadly Christian’ requirement for some or all of their pupils. This is called a ‘determination’, and alternative worship must be provided for these pupils, although it still has to be some form of worship.

Neither the parental nor the sixth-former’s right to withdraw nor the possibility of obtaining a determination are satisfactory means of achieving inclusivity. Even if parents are aware of the collective worship law, which many are not, few avail themselves of the right to have children excused from worship, not wishing them to be singled out or to miss the valuable elements of school assemblies: the celebration of shared values and the sharing of the school culture and ethos. Opting out is, in any case, a negation of inclusiveness. The process of obtaining a determination is often sufficiently bureaucratic and time-consuming to deter schools, apart from those with large and assertive groups of non-Christians. The law does not allow schools to hold inclusive assemblies instead of worship, because the majority of their pupils are not religious, though surveys show that this must often be the case.

Frequently, schools can only provide worthwhile and inclusive assemblies by breaking the law, sometimes with the connivance of the local Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education (SACRE). Despite acknowledging that worship laws ‘do not permit the replacement of worship with a non-religious option’, when Baroness Lorely Burt brought forward a Private Members’ Bill aiming to scrap collective worship and introduce inclusive assemblies, the Government claimed the current law ‘allows schools to tailor their provision to suit their pupils’ spiritual needs’. This legal muddle leads to a far from ideal situation. Ofsted stopped inspecting whether English schools are providing collective worship in 2004, concluding that at that time 76% of schools were failing to comply with the law. But that meant that 24% were providing daily worship, and many of the 76% were providing at least some worship (just not daily). In addition, Estyn continues to inspect Welsh schools on their collective worship provision, although there is no such inspection in Northern Ireland.

In 2025 the Supreme Court ruled, in a case known as JR87, that an exclusively Christian RE and collective worship was ‘indoctrination’. This was a landmark judgment, with some commentators calling it the most significant development in the history of education in Northern Ireland. We supported the claim, intervening when it appeared before the Court of Appeal. The Court also ruled that the right of withdrawal is clearly stigmatising in a context where no other children are withdrawn. Parents having a ‘reasonable apprehension’ of such stigma is ‘sufficient’ enough to mean they do not have to have actually withdrawn their children, and found that stigma does indeed occur. Although the case was about Northern Ireland, the ruling has significant implications on collective worship in England and Wales as the law is precisely the same. We have written to both the UK and Welsh governments calling on them to urgently review and reform collective worship. In February 2026 the UK Government announced that it was fully committed to collective worship but that Circular 1/94, the thirty-two year old guidance on collective worship in England would be updated. However, we have argued that updating the guidance does not address the wider issue: that compulsory Christian worship cannot be pluralistic, objective, and critical.

The Northern Ireland Government has issued new guidance mandating a ‘meaningful’ alternative for those withdrawn though then providing examples of activities that are not, in our view, all meaningful. It has suggested that this new guidance is sufficient to meet the judgment. We are unsure about this and considering our next steps.

In 2019 we won a legal case with parents Lee and Lizanne Harris against a school in England’s policy on collective worship, meaning the school had to provide an alternative assembly of equal educational worth for all children withdrawn from collective worship. The story hit the headlines across The Guardian, BBC and other outlets with coverage reporting it was a ‘significant win’ in ensuring schools do not force religious worship on children. However, as we won because the school backed down before the hearing, it did not set a legally binding precedent.

In 2023, following input from us, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that laws requiring school worship should be repealed, and children given an independent right to opt out.

A 2019 YouGov poll commissioned by Humanists UK found that parents think religious worship is the least appropriate of 13 different topics and activities for assemblies, with just 29% saying it is appropriate and 50% saying it is not. An earlier 2011 ComRes English poll for the BBC Regional Religion Unit found that 60% of the public did not think the requirement to hold a daily act of collective worship should be enforced, versus 33% who thought it should be. 30% of parents thought it should be enforced, versus 39% of those without children. A more recent 2024 poll by Teacher Tapp, which surveyed 2,000 school leaders, found that 70% of them opposed the legal requirement to hold a daily act of collective worship. A 2025 poll commissioned by Northern Ireland Humanists found that 53% of respondents thought ‘the requirement to provide a daily act of collective worship in schools should not be compulsory’, with just 34% thinking it should be.

We want to see the current law requiring daily collective worship replaced with a requirement for inclusive school assemblies. In this, we agree with many religious groups and all the major education unions. Such assemblies should explore topics such as happiness, sadness, beauty and the arts; encourage kindness, sharing and creativity; consider life, love, and death; and investigate what it means to be human. These assemblies should delve into different religious and non-religious points of view. But no-one should feel that their own beliefs are being contradicted, or that they are wrong for not sharing the religious views being presented by the teacher.

In 1998 proposals to reform the law in line with what we would like to see were supported by all the major teaching unions, the Local Government Association, most national RE bodies including two-thirds of the members of the RE Council, two-thirds of Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Christian Education Movement, the Buddhist Society, the Sikh Education Council, the National Council of Hindu Temples, and all responding members of the Inter Faith Network for the UK. In 2006 legislative proposals to the same end were also supported by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís, the Unitarian Church, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, and the Hindu Academy. In 2014 the National Governors’ Association; the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, who then Chaired the Church of England’s Board of Education; and the Liberal Democrats all came out in favour of scrapping collective worship.

What we’re doing

• We have called on the UK, Welsh, and Northern Ireland governments to review and reform collective worship in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in light of the Supreme Court ruling on JR87.
• We also support Humanist Society Scotland in its campaign for an independent right for pupils to opt out of religious observance (RO) as part of the Scottish Government’s Religious Observance (RO) Bill. The proposed changes have been criticised by the Scottish Children’s Commissioner.
• We worked with Parliamentarians to propose amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which would have removed the requirement for daily mandatory Christian collective worship in English schools of no religious character, and replace it with a requirement for these schools to provide inclusive assemblies for all pupils regardless of beliefs. We also support Baroness Lorely Burt’s Private Members’ Bill which seeks to do the same thing.
• We advise and support parents who are experiencing difficulties securing inclusive assemblies or withdrawing their children from collective worship, both through our parents’ guides for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and by giving bespoke advice where necessary. We also provide a step-by-step guide for parents to follow when attempting to get their child’s school to introduce a meaningful alternative to worship.
• In Northern Ireland, we are working alongside other groups, including Parents for Inclusive Education NI, to campaign for the replacement of collective worship with inclusive assemblies. As mentioned already, we also intervened in the JR87 case when it was before the Court of Appeal.
• We are a member of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) and work together with them and with children’s rights organisations in Wales and Northern Ireland to lobby for change in worship laws via processes such as the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s Concluding Observations. In 2023, we welcomed the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s recommendation that children under 16 be able to withdraw themselves from collective worship. The recommendation featured in the latest report on children’s rights in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We provided written and oral evidence at multiple stages over the reporting process, as well as via children’s rights organisations in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This was the second set of Concluding Observations that challenged the law on collective worship, with the first published in 2016.
• We provide schools with access to hundreds of inclusive assemblies through our free resource hub Assemblies for All.
• We have a good working relationship with officials in the UK and Welsh Departments for Education (DfE) and regularly respond to relevant Government consultations, provide briefings and evidence on the issue of collective worship to inform their work.

Appendix: Past work on this issue

• In 2022, we supported peers in the House of Lords to table amendments on collective worship to the Schools Bill. Unfortunately, these were blocked by the Government. However, due to unrelated issues, the Bill was later dropped. Earlier attempts to repeal the requirement for collective worship include during the passages of the Children, Schools and Families Act in 2010 and the Education Act in 2011.
• In 2019 and again in 2021, we supported Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Burt to introduce Private Members’ Bills that, had they become law, would have replaced collective worship with inclusive assemblies. But, despite strong support in the House of Lords, the Government refused to back them and they fell away at the end of their respective parliamentary terms.
• In 2019, we had a huge win in the case of Lee and Lizanne Harris, who won in their bid to secure an alternative assembly of equal educational worth for children at their school who are withdrawn from collective worship. The parents successfully argued that compulsory prayers in assembly was against their children’s rights to freedom of religion or belief. The school conceded, agreeing to provide an alternative assembly with no Christian worship. However, as we won because the school backed down before the hearing, it did not set legally binding precedent.
• In 2015 a group of academics similarly advocated for reform, as did the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, led by former high court judge Elizabeth Butler-Sloss.