Religious Education (RE) should be re-branded as “Religion and Worldviews” in schools to ensure its survival as a subject, a new report has said.

The syllabus should be updated to reflect Britain’s “wonderfully diverse” society, according to a two-year study carried out by the Commission on Religious Education.

New topics could include humanism, secularism, atheism and agnosticism, all of which could be taught alongside the traditional religions.

It is one of a number of reforms proposed in a study published today [SUN] which sets out a national strategy for RE in schools.

Less than a quarter of schools do not teach RE during the first three years of senior school, and around a third do not offer the subject as an option for GCSEs.

The report also says that RE should be statutory for all publicly funded schools, and that teachers should receive better training for the discipline.