A York-based parents' pressure group, seeking higher standards in state education, has warned headteachers against calling for an end to the daily act of worship in schools throughout the country.

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said that polls showed parents remained overwhelmingly in favour of collective worship, despite moves by headteachers to drop the practice.

Members of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), who are holding their annual conference in Eastbourne, will risk the wrath of both the Government and Christian campaigners when they call tomorrow for an end to daily prayer.

The law requires schools to hold an act of worship of a broadly Christian nature each day and the Education Secretary, David Blunkett, has ruled out change.

But the NAHT says this is impractical in an age when most teachers are not Christians.

It wants to see collective worship replaced by a requirement "for all pupils to be assembled together in appropriately sized groups, at least once a week, for their spiritual and moral development, via collective worship or otherwise".

It says more and more pupils of other faiths are being withdrawn from assemblies because their parents do not want them to take part in Christian worship.

But Mr Seaton warned today the move could lead to an explosion of political correctness in the daily assemblies - with parents unable to influence what their children were being taught.

He said: "If daily worship is replaced it will be with secular assemblies and there will be no rights for parents to withdraw.

"All sorts of politically-correct values could be taught without parents being able to do anything about it."

Meanwhile, concern at the falling numbers of "good, honest graduates" wanting to become teachers has led NAHT leader David Hart to call for a radical system of pay.

He wants a pay structure which rewards teachers for raising standards and curbing truancy.

Mr Hart said the teacher recruitment crisis is "a time- bomb" with new statistics showing 25 per cent of primary headship vacancies remaining unfilled.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.