From the Telegraph

The Welsh Assembly has just announced that it intends to allow sixth-formers to withdraw themselves from daily collective worship if they so wish. This would bring Wales into line with England, which relaxed the rules for older pupils in 2007.

Dr Geraint Tudur, general secretary of the Union of Welsh Independent Chapels, responds by saying that the Assembly was throwing “1,500 years of Welsh Christianity to the winds.”

I spent my schooldays in the Welsh education system and was subject to morning assembly – ostensibly Christian worship – and RI, Religious Instruction. By the time I reached the sixth form I had decided I was an atheist and refused to participate in the morning assemblies: the headmaster informed me that, by law, he was obliged to demand my attendance. I’ve forgotten how this was resolved; I may have attended and contented myself with disrupting the proceedings by making rude noises from the rear – pun intended.

What I do remember is that it was transparently apparent that almost none of the teachers wanted to be at morning assemblies either. The RI lessons were conducted by a well-meaning but weak Anglican clergyman whose weakness was mercilessly exploited by the class of sadistic teenage schoolboys.

What did have a lasting effect on me were two teachers who actually believed something with enough intensity that they felt they had to share it with their pupils. One was a math teacher who instilled in me sufficient curiosity to convince me to read Satre and Camus and the other was the chemistry teacher, an evangelical Christian, with whom I argued vigorously, but who made me think.

If this legislation comes into force, the shame would be not that a nominal morning exercise that almost no-one believes in is no longer mandatory, but what could come next: teachers no longer being allowed to stimulate nascent faith by discussing their own beliefs.