What's a non-religious school like?

[EducationDilemma]

I went to two primary schools. One was Catholic, and I was there until Year 3, when I moved to a C of E village school. Both were small by modern standards, although the C of E school was 32 pupils and the Catholic one felt much bigger at 150 pupils. In the morning, we always had assembly, which always included at least one hymn, usually two, and a Bible story which was related to our daily life, and we always had at least one prayer at the end. Both schools had close ties with a local church. The Catholic school integrated religion into the curriculum much more than the C of E school and we did pieces of work based around the Bible a lot more often.

At secondary, I went to a non-faith school, and assemblies were erratic, maybe once or twice a half term, led by a different member of staff each time, or the local vicar who was very "modern" and "Jesus is my homeboy", and all but one assembly was the Good Samaritan, presumably because staff didn't check with each other what we'd covered in every other assembly. We were obviously very disengaged and the lack of structure carried over into other aspects of secondary. IDK how representative this is.

I'm now looking at sending my own child to school this year, and my two main options aren't strongly tied to a faith, and it's got me wondering, what is it actually like at a non-religious primary school? What do they fill that vacuum with? What do they spend time doing? And how do they ensure the children develop a sense of wonder in the world? Do they have assemblies? How do they handle Easter/Christmas/the sacraments? DH went to Catholic schools all the way through so he's no help either.

What were your experiences and do you think schools have changed as a whole or that there's a massive difference between faith/non-faith schools?

I forgot to add, at the Catholic school we would carry religion into the playground a lot more, for example we watched this film about Saint Bernadette then for about a week all the girls in the playground were playing a re-enactment of it (and arguing over who got to be Bernadette).

When I was older, I remember a big group of us playing a re-enactment of the Crucifiction (which got us all into a lot of trouble because one boy got a bit too into his character as Jesus and took his jumper and shirt off).

At the C of E school we were more likely to play "tic" or "stuck in the mud" or "letters in your name" etc. But again I don't know how representative any of this is or whether it was just those particular schools.

May I suggest, OP, that you contact the schools in question, make an appointment with the Head and ask them these questions?

No-one here can give you information about specific schools, so I'm afraid you'll have to do your own legwork on this.

DDs have award assembly once a week and singing assembly once a week. Singing assembly is all very jolly, positive songs... basically hymns without God.

They look at all the major religions.

Its actually the only secular school in the area (village schools, it was the old RAF school) and the only one without Vicar visits, and consequently they do miss out by not being included in some stuff like Christingle, Carol service, Remembrance and Easter. Catchment is above religion for entry to all of them.

A non-aligned school is a school. If you feel the need to involve your kids with religion, there are mosques, churches, synagogues, temples etc, depending on your preference. Schools should be for learning about things, people, yourself, rather than indoctrination. God knows why you are concerned.

Yes you'd have to contact the schools in question. The non-religious schools around here are actually heavily influenced by a local evangelical church as well as obviously residing in a CofE parish whose vicar pops in at religious times.

However, back in the day my secondary was non-religious and we had twice weekly assemblies and there was still moral instruction through other means. I don't know what you mean by children developing a sense of wonder in the world, children appear to innately have this, if you mean believing that something more than the material world exists then a lot of us get by quite happily without the need for a supernatural belief system.

My daughter went to a community primary and now attends a non-denominational secondary school in London.

Although in England schools are supposed to have collective worship broadly Christian in nature (I quote from Humanists UK ) my daughter had assemblies celebrating many faiths' festivals in Primary. They also marked other important days like Remembrance Day. This has continued into secondary school along with assemblies on ethics, justice and personal safety. Issues such as child marriage and women's rights in the Middle East have been discussed.

Because of the diversity of the school (the children come from many backgrounds and faiths) my daughter says apart from the odd mention of going to a festival or an auntie's house to do something in their faith nothing much is observed around their differences. They just want to do teenage stuff.

UK non religious schools have assemblies. They hand out awards to children, give a general talk on a moral issue such as kindness, and make announcements if there is something of interest happening. Prayers are not usually included.

They celebrate all the major festivals of different religions - Eid, Divali, Christmas and Easter. Children get a broad overview of the world's religions, without any pressure of belonging to one of them.

There is no 'void' to be filled because the schools are not religious. Schools are very busy places and most time is spent on actual teaching.

@SkinnyFatte thank you, that sounds like what I was hoping to hear. I want my child to have a more diverse understanding of the world and I was hoping the secular schools would cover a range of different cultures and traditions.

@PuttingDownRoots thank you, that's exactly the sort of thing I was wondering about.

@KittieDaley thank you. By void I meant if you take all the time we spent doing religious stuff out of the day, what do they spend that time doing?

Similar to you with my upbringing.
My children all are non religious and I teach in a non religious school.
The void is filled with teaching about other religions and now how to practice a particular faith. It's about inclusion of every faith. I've strong views as looking back I feel I was indoctrinated. However, each to their own.

• not to practice

For what it’s worth, I don’t think people “develop a sense of wonder in the world” because of religion.

Agreed @TumbleFryer - there’s nothing like a child’s sense of wonder in the world, religious or not.

I went to a very mild CofE primary with an assembly but it was all very child friendly, jolly hymns and songs like Autumn Days. Very few prayers except grace at lunchtime. Church services once a term, harvest festival etc. we learned about other religions too and I officially became an atheist in late childhood/tween-age.

I guess the thing is, we don't know what you missed when you were watching films about St Bernadette instead.

My primary school sometimes had religious assemblies and we sung Christian songs but the curriculum wasn't religious at all. We did projects on things like the Aztecs, growing sunflowers, local history walks, writing stories. If it was Diwali we were told the story of the festival and how people celebrate and maybe got a chance to make a fancy candle holder or something. Christmas was a bigger deal and lots of crafting was done, so I guess in that way it was a bit more materialistic, but for the same reason we found out more about the world. That's an assumption I'm making because some of the things we learnt about would have had to be missed out for you to make time for the Catholic things, if that makes sense.

Thank you that sounds like so much fun. I would have loved to do about Aztecs and Diwali. My son made a lovely candle holder at nursery for Diwali this year.

And yes I don't know what I was missing while we had all that stuff instead, either! That's exactly why I am asking.

Why such a nasty comment. Just scroll on if you haven't anything to add. Jeez!

@EducationDilemma you do realise that all schools have to teach Religious Education as a subject. This covers all religions and belief/cultures.
So while children might not be actually saying a prayer they will learn about prayer.

Normal!

A religious school NEEDS to dedicate at least 10% of its teaching about religion. That’s a huge amount to me when more sensible things can be taught in what I think is quite a large chunk of time. That alone put me off.

I know - that's why it's so hard!

My guess would be that the really core stuff like maths, English, science were the non-negotiables and you'd have fitted those around the religious content. And then the things you'd do less of (except with regard to religion) would be things like music, history, other cultures, geography, art, drama/dance and so on.

Maybe try and think what subjects they covered as part of the religious stuff - history probably, reading and writing, drama? well at other schools you'd do the non religious version of that. So instead of watching a film about St Bernadette then acting things out, you might read The Worst Witch and act that out/write stories based on it.

We had assembly at primary and secondary school. Sang hymns at primary (I don't think these days they do). In the 90s we also said a prayer in assembly although I didn't really understand that it was a prayer, we didn't pray at home. I do remember the assemblies covering other religious festivals too like Diwali. And one day the teacher asked children who were members of other religions to raise their hands (! I am sure this wouldn't happen today!) and asked what they did when we all said the collective prayer, whether they said their own version of "amen" - I seem to remember the girl who was asked looking unsure and then just agreeing as she clearly thought it was the right thing to say!)

No singing at secondary school. I don't remember religious stories at primary or secondary school, though we would often have assemblies where a teacher told a story with some kind of moral. I remember my sister and I being in hysterics at home one day over the way our headteacher had retold the story of a spider that kept remaking its web even though a cleaner had removed it (or something). "Be like the little spider in the corner. If at first you don't succeed, try try again!"

Actually, we definitely did do the story of the Good Samaritan in assembly, though again, I am not sure this happens today in non faith schools. I also vaguely remember learning the story of Rama and Sita, but I can't remember it any more.

I don't think there was any vacuum. Probably we just spent more time on the other subjects we were learning about at the time? I do remember colouring, but no idea what we coloured, probably something related to whatever we were learning. I remember my favourite subject at primary school was "topic", where we learned about all sorts of different things, I remember houses, clouds, the celts and anglo-saxons, the Victorians, etc. I remember a computer program called My World which in hindsight was teaching mouse control through some simple games like dressing a teddy (it was early days of ICT in schools, so this was quite rare).

I don't specifically remember having a wonder in the world encouraged, but I think children of young primary age are pretty wondrous about the world anyway and I know when I brought stuff in from one subject to what we were talking about in another, the teacher was encouraging.

In fact what we did with extra time seemed to depend greatly on the teacher; I remember a couple who were very into music and singing and we did a lot of this. Others favoured silent reading. One was scientific and was famous for dissecting a pig's eyeball with the year 6 class (I was in her class and it was indeed illuminating!), one read Paul Jennings books to us, which got her in trouble with some parents! Games were also popular. Wink Murder, Heads Down Thumbs Up etc. Some did puzzles.

@BertieBotts I also loved "topic" ( we had "topic books") which as you say seemed to be anything from the suffragettes to the seashore.

Agree also that teachers (then at least) had a lot of scope to explore their own favourite subjects which then balanced out over years. Lots of science with one (racing cars down the playground sticks with me), lots of physical activity and arts with another.

Why such a nasty comment. Just scroll on if you haven't anything to add. Jeez!
@Mummummummumyyyyy I did add - sorry if you didn't like what I added. I was just pointing out that non religious schools are 'schools'. God knows why you took offence, but sorry anyway.

My DCs have been to Catholic School and the one thing I didn't realise is that 2 and a half hours a week of the curriculum HAVE to be dedicated to RE. I think it may be the same at CoE. This means there isn't much room on the curriculum for art, drama, music, cooking or crafts compared to non- faith schools. I wish I'd known this before sending them.