Earlier this year, Bjørn Ulvaeus wrote an article in The Guardian arguing that religion has no place in schools. Yet according to statistics published in August, the number of children in the UK opting to take GCSE Religious Education has risen for the eleventh year in a row. Paul Woolley, Director of Theos think tank, gives five reasons why children should study religion:

• religion has always been with us

• religion isn’t just yesterday’s news. It’s hugely significant today

• like it or not, religion is the future

• religious literacy is important for commerce

• perhaps most contentiously, religion persists and should be studied because it is often life-giving

You can read his article which explains these reasons on the Theos website.