ABSTRACT
In grammar schools, a single religious education period for all forms applies to two-thirds of the forms in the second year of the course, and to three-quarters or more for the remainder of it. Only in the first year do the majority of forms get two periods, and even so, it is only a bare majority. The myth of religious education given by an army of unbelieving conscripts dies hard. Within ten years the proportion of modern schools where virtually every form master takes his own form for religious education has dropped from something approaching a third to 2 percent or thereabouts. There are obvious disadvantages in any automatic assumption that every teacher ought to give religious education—Christians find it just as objectionable as secularists. In secondary schools as a whole just on half provide religious education courses for an external examination; about three-quarters of the comprehensive schools do so, and over half the selective.
