Religious studies has shown a large decline at GCSE, with less than half of secondary schools now offering the subject.

According to a new report conducted by academics at Liver-pool Hope University and backed by Culham St Gabriel’s, a trust that supports excellence in religious education, the numbers of schools participating in GCSE Religious Studies declined over-all across all categories from 2017 to 2018, though Catholic schools had proportionately the smallest decline at 3.1%. Among schools without a religious character, the decline was 18.1%. At the same time, the number of pupils in England and Wales taking GCSE religious studies fell for the third year in a row, down 1.6% against 2018 to 237,862.