SACRE Collective Worship Guidance

What is the relationship between Collective Worship and religious education?

Lambeth SACRE believes that:

• collective worship is, as set out in this document, a means whereby the school community comes together in order to celebrate and reflect upon those values that it considers important to promote; it is not assembly
• whilst collective worship should be a quality experience and pupils should learn from it, an act of collective worship is not a lesson;
• religious education is a subject of the curriculum and as such cannot be taught through collective worship;
• religious education could not be delivered in a broad, balanced and differentiated way to all pupils through collective worship;
• it would not be possible to allocate sufficient time to religious education in order to teach it appropriately through collective worship;
• collective worship provides opportunities to reflect on how beliefs that pupils know and understand through planned educational experiences in religious education, have influenced people's life choices or actions;
• Schools should concentrate on organising short, quality collective worship of approximately 10 minutes daily.