In an interview for BBC Radio 4, the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, responded to recent calls from the National Governors' Association (NGA) for the practice of daily Christian worship in school assemblies to be abolished, reports Christian Concern for our Nation. Last week, the NGA, which represents school governors and trustees in England, called for the 70-year-old requirement, introduced by the 1944 Education Act to be scrapped since ‘schools are not places of worship, but places of education.’ Responding to the comments, Bishop Pritchard highlighted the ‘unique’ role played by school assemblies in both ‘building community’ and allowing children to ‘reflect on the deeper values that underpin the school community’ and shape society at large. He acknowledged that these values are drawn ‘very largely’ from the Christian faith, and that ‘so much of what has made us what we are, has come from a Christian source’. (See also Prayer Alert 25-2014)

Councils are to be given powers to stop funding early-years providers with links to extremism, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has announced. The move, in England, follows a letter-writing campaign by the British Humanist Association. Members wrote to MPs and responded to a nursery funding consultation, raising concerns about extremist links and creationist teaching in some nurseries. The Department for Education said the change closes ‘a technical loophole’. Mrs Morgan said that toddlers must learn ‘fundamental British values’ and that schools and nurseries that do not ‘support this aim’ should not receive public money. The move comes after allegations that hardline Islamists tried to take over some Birmingham schools in what was dubbed the Trojan Horse plot. Announcing the measures, Mrs Morgan, who replaced Michael Gove as education secretary in last month's Cabinet reshuffle, said there is no place for extremism ‘anywhere in the education system’.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an offensive advert featuring a digitally altered image of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. The image depicted Jesus with his arm around a bikini-clad woman, holding a champagne bottle and celebrating a gambling win. The advert was placed by Sporting Index Ltd in the City AM newspaper. The ASA received 25 complaints - including one from the Evangelical Alliance - and found the advert ‘was likely to cause offence to a significant number of Christians, regardless of this humorous intention... because it depicted the person of Jesus in a context at odds with commonly held beliefs about the nature of Christ’. The ASA ordered Sporting Index Ltd not to use the image again and not to use ads in future which link gambling to sex.

The Spending Plans Task Group of the Church Commissioners and Archbishops' Council has awarded £4.6m to projects from five dioceses from the new stream of Strategic Development Funding. Birmingham, Chelmsford, Leicester, Liverpool and Sheffield have all received grants for growth and change projects in their diocese. The funding is being awarded in several stages: the first applications for a pot of £7.5m were restricted to the poorest dioceses in the Church of England. The aim of the funding is to sit alongside existing funding distributed to dioceses each year, so they can benefit from a one-off injection of money to make a significant difference to their long-term mission and financial strength, by supporting major projects. The funding was awarded after a competitive process, in which dioceses were invited to put forward initial applications to the Task Group. Those proposals which met the criteria most strongly were then invited to submit detailed project plans.