School assemblies

NotSpaghetti

I would NOT like to hear our National Anthem to be sung on the USA level!
😱

Nor me. And the thought of putting my hand on my heart while singing it makes me shudder. It is so very non-British and so very American but each to their own.

Getting staff to do any kind of assembly service is quite an ask on top of their other work. It takes quite a lot of preparation and organisation. Even getting the children to perform their own assembly entails a lot of effort.

I was lucky in that my grandfather was a clergyman, so, along with my stage school training, I had a bit of an inkling how to energise a larger audience twice a week! We invited the parents along on occasions. I also had the services of the school chaplain who engaged the children in activities and role plays. There was certainly none of the hellfire and damnation preaching, but we got a Christian based message across.
I'm not sure how I'd go about it these days.

Cossy

Religious assemblies are held still in CoE and Catholic Schools.

Personally I don’t think religious assemblies should be held (daily or weekly) in anything else other than faith schools.

I do think however that Religious Education should be taught as a subject, covering all religions.

I get all my religious education off the daily news. All Arabs want to wipe all Jews off the face of the earth a la Ayatollahs and similarly all Jews want to wipe all Arabs off the face of the earth a la Netenyahu and each reavows their intentions on daily basis. We are a Christian nation but we've allowed others to obliterate that fact. Prior to the 1st Gulf War British service men and women stationed in Saudi Arabia were not allowed Christian services prior to the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein s invasion.

Secondary schools cannot accommodate a daily assembly. Their halls can only fit one Year Group in at a time, so at most each student attends one assembly a week. It is decades since it was a collective act of daily worship. Schools, like UK society, are largely secular and cannot get their staff to lead a daily worship.

Agree. Very uplifting when I was at a school assembly with the young voices singing their little hearts out. Wonderful. 💐

Religious assemblies are held still in CoE and Catholic Schools.

Personally I don’t think religious assemblies should be held (daily or weekly) in anything else other than faith schools.

I do think however that Religious Education should be taught as a subject, covering all religions.

argymargy

I think religion is for home, places of worship and/or community groups, not school. I don't have a problem with school assemblies with songs or poems or whatever they want to do, just not religion.

Completely agree.

I can see that a Christian assembly might be inappropriate nowadays, but when we had them in the 50s I really loved them. I am not at all religious, but I like singing and I like words, so the traditional hymns and prayers were a joy to me. Every morning we had a hymn, the Lord’s Prayer, another prayer, a Bible reading, a psalm from the Oxford Psalter sung to Anglican Chant, and a short talk from the headmistress. We filed out to music played on the piano by pupils. Jewish and Catholic girls came in for the notices.

I don’t think I ever believed any of it, but I still loved it and learnt a great deal. I was sorry that my offspring didn’t hàve anything similar in senior school - they did at primary level.

Secondary schools haven't had a school hall big enough for a daily whole school assembly for literally half a century! On the odd occasion when everyone gets together - end of year? -(1000 teenagers sitting on the floor in a sports hall without their bags) it takes 15 minutes to get them in and 10 minutes to get them out. Then they have to return to their tutor base to collect their bags. Never a good way to start the day!

Btw only approx 6% of UK population goes to church once a fortnight or more.

That, Franski, is a BIG question and so far there is no consensus on the answer to the problem.

People do need rituals with meaning. My own feeling is that Christianity has everything in its favour ----rituals and moral code-----except for belief in a supernatural way of being.

With people increasingly educated according to Enlightenment science, fewer and fewer are inclined to take traditional Christian supernaturalism seriously.

I find it easy to combine the spirit of most of the old hymns with scientific knowledge. If anyone is interested I can try to help them to understand .

Singing hymns in assembly as a child was a joy - simply because they had such good tunes and having a good sing in the morning woke you up and set you up for the day. But, as Tim Minchin says in his "White Wine in the Sun" - "Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords but the lyrics are spooky"

Our local school does have assembly with singing but it is usually themed around values: kindness etc.

I think the law (1988) still says that there should be a "daily act of collective worship" - faith schools (even when state funded) have more stringent rules about the religious element although pupils and teachers can opt out.

It's crazy in 2026 and most schools just ignore it (so what's the point of the rule!?) and have a weekly assembly with a broadly moral theme.

My local primary starts the day for every child from age 4 upwards with 15 minutes of music - little ones play ocarina, older ones recorder - which is brilliant. There's lots to be said for starting the day with music and a jolly good sing - it does not have to be religious.

We never had daily morning assemblies at school here - either at primary or secondary. At best, they were once a week and often not even that.
As for funerals, I don't see the point in having hymns if the deceased wasn't a religious person and didn't want them. At both of my late in-laws' funerals, we had a humanist celebrant and just played music that we knew they liked or was relevant to their lives.

I've been to a few funerals recently. Very few people (young or old) seem to know the hymns- the sort of hymns we used to sing at school. But the families of the deceased obviously think these songs have meaning.
Seems like this UK is now a secular country with a sentimental attitude towards Christian tradition. So not many folk seem to want children in schools to learn the songs and prayers, but on the other hand there is nothing to replace them. Churches are still popular for weddings and funerals. Why is this? And what can or should replace prayers amd hymns?

What do GNetters think?

the social psychology of a school morning assembly is that it it is emotionally binding, and thus an opportunity for the head to rein force the school ethics.

Since most decent schools nowadays are not religiously divisive most school assemblies don't include blatantly religious rituals.

I am certainly old enough and Christian enough to enjoy the old 'Hymns and Modern' and still do, however I can move with the times.

The Christian icon, Jesus, aka love, is a moving icon .

We had CofE morning assemblies (the 'fancies' were excused till the notices) but I found them deadly boring and I think some of the staff looked bored too. Contributed to my lifelong resistance to religeon in general. Often used to keep people in their place, persuade them to fight in wars, etc.

'Home time' in our inner city primary school classroom meant putting our chairs up on our desks 'for the cleaners', standing with head bowed, eyes shut and hands folded in prayer, and singing Now the day is over.

Every day!

I would NOT like to hear our National Anthem to be sung on the USA level!
😱

Personally I loved the hymn-singing bit. I’m not at all religious but I still love so many traditional old hymns.

A really Big Thing at my first school was being given your own hymn book - once they thought you could read well enough.
Until then we were told to ‘sing it to la’.

Lathyrus3

Who put the colours in the rainbow?
Who put the sausage in the cheese?

It was ages before I worked out what they were actually singing………

🤣🤣 That sounds like the words songs get changed to, like shepherds washing their socks by night.
We had the words up on a big screen, but taught the younger children line by line in hymn practice.
Re teaching other religions.
I enjoyed it, especially with Y2 children.
The birth of the Buddha, where His mother, Maya, conceived him when she dreamed that a white elephant entered her right side instead of Mary being told by an Angel caught the children’s interest.
The legend that the Buddha emerged from his mother’s side, as she stood leaning against a tree. He took seven steps and lotus flowers sprang up in his footsteps, fascinated the children.
(I didn’t mention the painless birth claim.)
I enjoyed the children discussing whether it was better to be told by an Angel or an elephant, or whether it was better to have gifts brought or be able to walk straight away.
They asked questions about what use the gifts were and what did Mary do with them. Or whether Buddha came out fully dressed when he walked or did his mum have clothes ready.

@Doodledog I totally agree. I think assemblies, even without religion, are a good way to put out school messages and create a sense of belonging. Community singing is also great for wellbeing. I still remember the rousing hymns from my 1960s grammar school

Who put the colours in the rainbow?
Who put the sausage in the cheese?

It was ages before I worked out what they were actually singing………

Getting the school together, for announcements, communal singing, music or poetry is all good, I think, as is an opportunity to listen to external speakers. Assemblies in themselves are not a bad thing.

At my primary school in the 50s we had assembly everyday. We sat crossed legged on the floor in long rows. There were 41 in a class from ages ran from 5 to 11.
Also in the C of E secondary modern school I attended 3 classes in each year, assembly was held every morning, crossed legged on the floor, except for Thursdays (I think) when we all went to church, instead of first class. There was a RE class every week.
My 3 DDs all went to a French RC, although a religious school there were no daily assemblies, only two church services, one at the beginning of the school year, the other at the end, not even at Christmas one. However, because it was a church school they also had a weekly RE. class, but they also learnt about other religions.

Doodledog

argymargy

I think religion is for home, places of worship and/or community groups, not school. I don't have a problem with school assemblies with songs or poems or whatever they want to do, just not religion.

I agree with this.

I think that teaching about all religions should be compulsory for younger children, so that they understand the reasoning behind others' beliefs, but IMO worship should be separate from school.

Totally agree with this. I have no problem with school pupils being taught about world religions per se, but I definitely believe that religious worship itself should play no part in a state education.

My primary school and high school years had daily assemblies. We knew the music by heart.
We had a daily assembly, of a broadly Christian nature at our primary school where I played the hymns/songs from Come and Praise and other books.
The new head dismissed it as unnecessary and said we had to do something in our classrooms. 🤣

James B Partridge is on tour at the moment.
If you loved Who put the colours in the rainbow or Love is like a magic penny it’s well worth a visit. Manchester was packed and we had a great sing-along.