The Scottish Secular Society has launched a new campaign to force schools to create an ‘opt-in’ system for religious observance, it was reported in late August.
Currently all pupils in schools across Scotland are automatically involved in religious worship and parents are given the option to withdraw their children if they wish. But the Scottish Secular Society has launched a petition demanding an opt-in, rather than opt-out, system that will effectively require parents to give consent before their children are permitted to participate.
The Rev. David Robertson, a Free Church minister in Dundee, said: ‘Statistics go against the Scottish Secular Society — they are a tiny group of people who are seeking to impose their will and their philosophy on the vast majority of Scottish parents. More seriously, we do not believe that the Scottish Secular Society just intends to create an opt-in system of religious worship. Their belief and intention is that there should be no religious worship in state schools at all. They just see this as a first step’.
