In the UK, the law stipulates that all publicly funded schools must provide acts of worship for their pupils. The law in England and Wales requires students to actually “take part in” an act of collective worship each school day.
Parents are entitled to withdraw their children from RE or Collective Worship. A UK Parliamentary Human Rights Committee (JCHR) contends that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECnHR) requires that older pupils should be able to withdraw themselves from worship. Children’s rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion are stated under both Article 9 of the ECnHR and Article 14(1) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The JCHR have therefore recommended (on the basis of the ECnHR) that older children should have the right to exclude themselves from both collective worship and RE in schools, without having to have their parents’ consent to do so.
The UK Government however have ignored this advice and therefore may not be acting compatibly with the above Human Rights instruments.