Faith School - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The Education Act 1944 introduced the requirement for daily prayers in all state-funded schools, but later acts changed this requirement to a daily "collective act of worship", the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 being the most recent. This also requires such acts of worship to be "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character". The term "mainly" means that acts related to other faiths can be carried out providing the majority are Christian.

Independent schools are exempt from this provision, so it has always been possible to have an independent (not state-funded) school with no act of worship or those of other religions. However, many schools that were originally church schools are now largely state funded, as are some Jewish schools. These are allowed to have acts of worship "in accordance with the beliefs of the religion or denomination specified for the school". Until 1997, the UK funded only Christian or Jewish faith schools (Muslim schools existed but were privately funded), but the Labour Government 1997-2007 expanded this to other religions, and began using the term "faith school".

Note that the legislation of the United Kingdom varies between the different constituent countries, and thus there are some differences of detail in the educational governance.

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