The Collective Worship Policy

A Collective Worship Policy Statement should contain the information below.

Below are some of the accepted aims of collective worship in a Church School:

• A statement about the legal requirement for collective worship (daily; legal entitlement of all children in the school; legal right of parents to withdraw children from worship; "in accordance with the founding Church of England Trust Deed and the Ethos Statement in the school's Instruments of Government".)
• The Aims of collective worship in the school, which could be linked with a statement about the character and nature of the school and its community. (see chapter 4 for examples of Aims)
• Details of how the school plans collective worship:
1. timing, groupings, venue, regular worship leaders,
2. those who are involved in planning collective worship - co-ordinator and? (e.g responsibilities and roles of foundation governors)
3. evidence of an effective pattern of themes planned in advance, and available to all staff and worship leaders
4. evidence of use of varying types of worship experiences (e.g. prayer, music, silence, Bible reading, story, dance, puppets etc)
5. methods of record keeping and evidence of daily records being kept
6. budget, resources and INSET
7. the way pupils are involved in collective worship
8. details of any curricular links ( note, although there will be links between collective worship and RE in particular, schools cannot legally count collective worship as curriculum time - the aim of the experiences are clearly different)
9. methods of evaluating the collective worship process.
10. If you make use of Visitors in collective worship it is important to have information about how these will be briefed/prepared for a visit to the school.
11. If pupils are withdrawn from collective worship, the policy should also include a statement explaining how the school will exercise its duty of supervision of such children.

Important questions for the school to ask about Collective Worship Plans and Records

• What format of record keeping would be most supportive to monitoring and long term planning?
• How do we include other worship providers (e.g. local clergy, members of the parish) in the planning process?
• Do we have a suitable handout on collective worship in our school which could be given to occasional visitors?

Contents

1. What is worship?
2. Collective Worship and the law
3. The Anglican Tradition
4. The Aims of Collective Worship
5. The Policy
6. Ways of planning and recording
7. Planning Issues
8. Collective worship ideas and support on the world wide web
9. Asking Visitors to lead worship
10. Guidelines to be given to Visitors to lead worship
11. Are Assembly and Collective worship the same thing?
12. Themes and schemes for planning collective worship
13. Bible stories for use with collective worship themes
14. Involving pupils in Collective worship

Document Downloads

• Collective Worship in Church Schools