The law states that:

• If the parent asks that a pupil should be wholly or partly excused from receiving any religious education at the school, then the school must comply;
• As schools act in loco parentis, a school continues to be responsible for the supervision of any child withdrawn by its parents from RE unless the child is lawfully receiving religious education elsewhere;
• Withdrawal time should not be used to teach other curriculum areas e.g. additional mathematics sessions;
• If a parent so requests, and so long as the local authority is satisfied that this will not interfere with the child’s attendance at school other than at the beginning or end of any school session, a pupil may be withdrawn from the school premises to receive religious education elsewhere of a kind which is not provided in the school during the periods of time that the child is so excused.

It should be noted that arranging alternative religious education is extremely rare.

• If a parent wishes their child to receive alternative religious education that cannot be provided elsewhere (as above), the school is required to allow such education within the school as long as it does not consider there are special circumstances in which it would be unreasonable to do so. Any arrangement must not incur any extra cost for the school. This usually would mean that parents could send in RE materials for the pupil to work on during RE lesson.

All requests to withdraw from Religious Education lessons must be made to the headteacher, Mrs J Marr. 

head@northern.lancs.sch.uk