The National Secular Society has called for an end to the law requiring schools to hold daily acts of collective worship, after the Government said it will update guidance on this law.

The law in England and Wales requires that children at all maintained schools “shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship”. Even in schools with no religious character, the worship must be “wholly or mainly of a Christian character”.

A Supreme Court ruling last year found collective worship in Northern Ireland, where the law is similar, breaches children’s and parent’s rights to freedom of religion or belief under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), because it is not “objective, critical and pluralistic”.

The court found that the right of parents to withdraw children from collective worship is insufficient, because doing so could place “undue burden” on the parents in the case by exposing their nonreligious beliefs to the school community or leading them to being viewed as “difficult or awkward”.

The Department for Education told the NSS yesterday that the guidance on collective worship “does need to be updated to reflect the current legal framework within which collective worship takes place and to make expectations clearer – including to reflect ECHR requirements in terms of objective, critical and pluralistic delivery”.

However, it said there are “no plans” to change the legislation itself.

The most recent guidance on collective worship, issued in 1994, says worship in schools “should be concerned with reverence or veneration paid to a divine being or power”.

In 2024, a poll of around 2,000 senior leaders at primary and secondary schools in England found 70% “disagree” or “strongly disagree” with the collective worship. Just 12% of senior leaders support the current law.

NSS: “no amount of revised guidance can fix a fundamentally outdated law.”

NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said: “Objective, critical and pluralistic worship is a contradiction in terms.

“The legal requirement for a daily act of broadly Christian worship in schools conflicts with children’s freedom of belief and is a relic of a bygone age that should be removed from the statute book.

“While we will engage constructively on guidance to make schools more inclusive, ministers should be clear that no amount of revised guidance can fix a fundamentally outdated law.”