state-funded schools in 1980 with the passage of the 1980 Education (Scotland) Act. This and subsequent acts of Parliament, which remain law today, require that these acts of worship are “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.”20 While such a specification almost certainly precludes this policy of religious observance from passing Audi’s principle of secular rationale, there are, from a liberal perspective, some minor redeeming qualities to the law. First, committees made up of local government representatives and leaders of local religious groups known as SACREs may negate the Christian element to the period of religious observance. In addition, parents have the right to withdraw their children from school during the daily periods of religious observance and during other religious education programming.21 Neither of these exceptions - granted to objecting localities and parents - are likely to placate liberal critics of the policy, and the nature of it being opt-out system for Christian religious observance rather than an opt-in one confirms that it does not pass Audi’s test. However, the law, passed in 1980 and confirmed by Parliament in subsequent Education Acts, creates - for Christians at least - a multiculturalist system in which school administrators may design acts of religious observance for their students to perform, allowing Catholics educational independence under the law.
III.II Changes in Society
VVThe laws described above have lasted decades and remain in place in Scotland. However, Scottish society has experienced in that same period remarkable shifts in its attitudes toward and identification with religion and particular religious sects. This development can be seen in two interrelated trends: that away from sectarian identification and that toward greater secularization. This paper will consider both, noting that the trends are strong enough to question the two multiculturalist education policies in the light of a society in which fewer individuals identify along divisive Catholic-Protestant sectarian lines—or even religious ones.
88820. See: Education Act 1996, ss 385-386.
88821. Rivers, 146.
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