A recent podcast series on the 2013-14 Trojan Horse affair – an alleged but unproven plot to implement a strict Islamic ethos in some schools in Birmingham – has drawn attention to the place that religion occupies in state-funded education in England and Wales.
While some countries such as France or the United States make a clear separation between church and state and do not allow religion in state-funded schools, in England and Wales schools are legally required to hold daily acts of collective worship that must be broadly Christian in character, unless schools obtain permission to provide alternative worship.
