Last year, for the first time in more than a decade, the number of pupils in England and Wales taking a GCSE in religious education fell and the data showed that many schools were no longer even offering RE.

In 2017, the number of students taking a full-course GCSE in RE fell by 4.6 per cent against the previous year, to 269,839. Meanwhile, the number studying the short- course GCSE in RE (in which pupils study half the GCSE syllabus and take an exam after one year instead of two) fell by a quarter to 53,071.