In response to a consultation which closed this week, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland (CYPCS) said the current government proposals “may appear, superficially, to provide progressive realisation of children’s rights” but ultimately fall short.

At present, section 9 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 gives parents the right to withdraw their children from religious observance.

The government is proposing to change this to require schools to take the children’s views into account, which it says will bring the legislation into alignment with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, incorporated into Scots law last year.

However, the CYPCS said the current proposal does not represent “significant progress towards UNCRC compliance, given its divergence from a clear recommendation made by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in the 2023 concluding observations”.

Instead of “empower[ing] children to make a decision on their participation in collective worship”, the proposed change “transfers the ability to make a final decision on withdrawal from parents to the State”, the watchdog said.

“The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is clear that children’s rights are not realised merely by their views being heard when decisions are made by adults,” it added, saying that children “should be able to independently exercise a legal right to withdraw from religious observance”.

Similar arguments have been made in consultation responses from Humanist Society Scotland and the National Secular Society – the latter of which has proposed the outright repeal of the statutory requirement for religious observance in schools.

Humanist Society CEO Fraser Sutherland said: “The Scottish government has sat on this now for the best part of a decade and rather than grasp the issue it has brought forward a half-baked and ill-considered response.

“It is not right that in this day and age, in a majority non-religious country such as Scotland, young people are being made to sit through compulsory Christian worship regardless of their beliefs, religious or not.”

National Secular Society spokesperson Alejandro Sanchez said: “Mandatory religious observance in Scottish schools is not only incompatible with children’s right to freedom of religion or belief, but may also exacerbate sectarianism.

“The Scottish government’s proposed changes are mere lip service to upholding children’s rights. Meaningful reform requires the repeal of laws mandating religious observance.

“The Committee on the Rights of the Child have repeatedly made this plain to the Scottish government. It is high time the Scottish government abided by these recommendations.”