Every religion should be taught in primary schools, not just Christianity, says former professor of religious studies Peter Donovan.

A retired religious studies lecturer thinks Nelson primary school children should be taught about other religions other than just Christianity.

Former Massey University associate professor of religious studies Peter Donovan said only Christian examples of religion were being taught at primary schools in New Zealand and he wanted that to change because it's wasn't a true representation of the country's multi-cultural communities.

"By modern standards that's very narrow minded because we now got a community in which many other faiths are represented and also a declining church membership."

Donovan said he wanted primary school children to be taught about other religions and non-religions that made up the community, such as Buddhism, Islam, Agnostic, Atheist and Hinduism.

"Nelson, having been the place where it all originated, should be a suitable place to trial a fresh 21st century approach bringing world religions into education in general."

Donovan said he wanted to trial a new model that would use existing curriculum subjects like history, languages and social studies to incorporate information about world faiths.

This would make it easier for young children to understand the new information, instead of introducing a separate subject such as religious studies at primary school level.

He said he was consulting with the Human Rights Commission and eventually hoped to get the approval from the Ministry of Education to develop and trial the new model in the region.

"I'm thinking if we can encourage local initiatives that try and find resources locally or encourage schools to invite in speakers or draw on general education material, then we can get over that hurdle on a local level.

"Because without that being tried and shown to be successful, no government is going to take the plunge and try and drastically alter something that's a long established tradition."

Donovan said the current century old "Nelson System", which was adopted 140 years ago by the 1877 Education Act to allow secular New Zealand state primary schools to have "a Bible lesson to be read in school at a special hour", was outdated.

"This decision was perfectly understandable at the time. Religion was to be left largely for the churches to deal with."

He said the problem was that "this educational blind-spot" remained part of primary schools to date.

"The founding fathers [of the Nelson System] all thought in terms of Christianity as the only religion they were considering [as] they had no notion of studying any other religions as an educational issue.

"By keeping schools technically secular, and simply allowing some Christian education to be taught outside official teaching time, by church-based volunteers, this information gap has remained."

Donovan said the Nelson System had received modifications through later Education Acts, but it was still "unsuitable" for today's "diverse social and educational environment".

He said universities and to some extend secondary schools were using religious studies to cover world religions.

"In our multi-cultural society today that's what's obviously going to be needed to keep people aware of the variety of beliefs and unbeliefs.

"Without that New Zealand becomes more and more insular."

Donovan said he was in the process of consulting with Nelson and Tasman primary schools, the NZ School Trustees Association, the Nelson-Tasman Interfaith Council, and the Churches Education Commission.

"This model will be teacher-led and educationally-secular, and will enable schools to acquaint students with information about all world faiths, especially those represented in our local communities.

"Such an approach already exists in university religious studies programmes in New Zealand, and is increasingly being introduced at secondary school level."