Like many people my instinctive reaction is to be dismayed at the news that the head teacher of a primary school in Sheffield has resigned after her proposal to end separate Muslim assemblies brought accusations of racism. The city council’s statement that her resignation has nothing whatever to do with this row seems to me barely credible.
It’s important in reacting to this however not to assume this is about Muslim parents not wanting to accept the law of the land. Separate assemblies are perfectly lawful. While section 70 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 requires each pupil to take part in an act of collective worship daily, it does not require there to be a single act of worship. Under schedule 20 to the Act – paragraph 3 is key – acts of collective worship can be non-religious or indeed Islamic so long as taking any school term as a whole, most acts of collective worship are “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character” – in other words, if just over half of them are Christian in quite a woolly way. And the extent to which other kinds of collective worship take place should depend, according to paragraph 3(5) and (6), on the family backgrounds of the school’s pupils. So it was probably lawful for Meerbrook Bank to have had separate Islamic assemblies, so long as there were an equal number of “mainly broadly Christian” assemblies during the term – plus one more for good measure. I doubt that any religious believer is happier with this mish-mash than is any secularist.
The problem is not with Muslim parents’ acceptance of the law of the land: it’s with the law of the land itself. The ludicrously Victorian section 70 and Schedule 20 should be repealed so that schools can have wholly secular assemblies. That’s the way to end sectarian squabbling and move towards genuine community cohesion.
I absolutely agree with your conclusion that the problem stems from the absurd Victorian laws that remove the parents right to provide the spiritual leadership to their children. I feel the British governement are hypocrites to say they promote a tolerant society/community when they allow these antiquated laws to remain on the books. My child is currently discriminated because I have had to remove him from assembly as we feel the school has no right to shove the Christian views down my 5 year old’s throat through a Christian collective worship; consequently,the damage is to the children. My boy asks me ‘what did he do wrong?’ I am insulted and embarrassed that the British government cannot value all children, even those who are not ‘mainly broadly Christian.’
If anyone knows how I could sue the government for discrimination I would be happy to discuss.