Always room for a nativity

Is the traditional Christian nativity play still justified in the schools of today's multi-faith Britain? Caroline Haydon peeks through the stable door

At Cranford Infant and Nursery School, the rehearsal for the nativity play is going well. The shepherds look a little nervous, the angels a little boisterous - it is no different here from hundreds of schools up and down the land as the nativity season gets under way. It is not every school, however, in which Mary will be played by a Filipino Christian six-year-old and Joseph by a Punjabi Sikh seven-year-old.

At Cranford, hard up against the Heathrow perimeter fence in Hounslow, on the outskirts of London, 91 per cent of pupils are from ethnic minority backgrounds. Some schools have a large Christian minority population, but at Cranford the mix is wide, with Punjabi Sikh and Pakistani Muslim children dominating, and a fair sprinkling of Hindu and Christian children.

It raises the question of whether schools such as Cranford should perform a nativity play at all. Yet all the evidence is that this much-loved remnant of the somewhat holier Christmases of days past is staying the course, even if it varies in its religious overtones. In some schools, it might be quieter and more reflective, incorporating prayer by candlelight; in others, it is more of an annual public relations exercise for the parents, in which every child gets a part even if they have to be snowflakes.

Meena Walia, Cranford's head teacher, points out that her Asian parents love the school's relatively traditional nativity play. "Many are third generation here, and many want their children to know the traditions of this country," she says. But Cranford, which recently got an Ofsted accolade for its atmosphere of "total racial harmony", also works hard to promote other religions and cultures within the school.

This makes for a pretty busy autumn for hard-working staff, who progress through a season of assemblies celebrating harvest festival, Diwali and Eid before they even reach Christmas. The Cranford children had, in fact, visited a Sikh temple and a mosque the morning before their nativity rehearsal. And two Sikh children cheerily confided that they certainly celebrated Christmas at home (with, of course, presents), as well as the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi in the Spring.

Chris Baxter, the head of nearby Berkeley Primary, which has a 70 per cent ethnic group total, also recognises and marks other celebrations. But she keeps "a fairly traditional nativity", so that children can learn about what is important to many Christian people at this time of year. "All our families enjoy the Christmas play and seeing their children take part, and I think they would be disappointed if we didn't do one," she says. "It also shows that we try to be equal and fair in our recognition and marking of the special festivals of different faiths."

Another popular option in schools with multi-faith communities is to celebrate all the winter festivals that have light and dark at the heart of their symbolism - Christmas, Diwali, Hannukah - in one Festival of Light concert.

But there are rarely, it seems, objections to the traditional nativity play or to carol concerts. John Coe, of the National Association for Primary Education, says he has never known of any problems arising between parents of non-Christian faiths and schools over Christian celebrations at this time of year. Parents do have a right to withdraw their children, but this rarely happens.

A Muslim teacher in Birmingham, however, was reported to have complained about Muslim children singing in a carol concert a while ago, because the carols dealt with the Christian concept of the incarnation of God as human - a belief not held by Muslims, who believe that Jesus was an important prophet but not the son of God made man. This was reasonable, although maybe mishandled, says Lesley Prior, a Religious Education adviser in Hounslow. "It's about context as much as theology," she maintains. "Was the carol singing part of a concert or was it an act of worship? After all, many people sing Verdi's Requiem as a concert piece."

Prior was a teacher before she became an adviser on religious affairs, and firmly believes that children need to imbibe the Christmas story as part of their general knowledge. "Otherwise, how can they make sense of art, music and literature?" she asks. "But they shouldn't spend weeks rehearsing and practising - parents love it when it's a little rough round the edges, and the child proclaims loudly: 'Oh yes, come in - there's loads of room at the inn.'"

The nativity play is the icing on top of the Christmas cake, in some cases the one potentially religious moment in our notoriously commercialised celebrations, and its continued popularity has perhaps allowed us to gloss over other, uncomfortable facts. Ofsted inspection reports have turned up so many instances of schools failing in what is still a legal duty to provide a daily act of worship that new guidance is being issued this month to inspection teams - ironically just before Christmas - allowing them to separate the question of whether the school is meeting legal requirements from the quality of the governance of the school. The impact of this, says Ofsted, will be to reduce the number of schools where governance is judged unsatisfactory for this reason alone.

Schools can, of course, ask their local authority to exempt them from the requirement that the act of worship should be broadly Christian in character, as schools such as Cranford have done, but the legal onus for a daily service is still there. The Education Secretary Charles Clarke has kept the subjects of religious education, daily worship and faith schools under his own remit, so perhaps he has other changes in mind.

We have managed to muddle along in a typically British fashion on the question of school religion in an increasingly multicultural or no-faith environment, where issues of morality are not always seen by parents as the prerogative of the Church of England, or indeed any religion. At Cranford, though, and at most schools this Christmas, it will be business as usual - and the parents will love it.

education@independent.co.uk