ABSTRACT
In 1944 the wartime coalition government passed an Education Act designed to function as one of the cornerstones of post-war recovery and reconstruction in England and Wales. The Act included provision for religious education, including the key requirements that in all schools the day was to begin with an act of collective worship, attended by all pupils, and that all pupils were also to receive religious instruction (subject only to the right of parents to withdraw their children from such worship and such classes). At the same time the Act sought finally to resolve the longstanding religious and denominational rivalry over education which had bedevilled the development of educational policy and provision in England and Wales since the early nineteenth century.
