Like many young people of Irish descent growing up in the west of Scotland, my parents sent me to a denominational school. Their reason was partly secular - the local Catholic school happened to be one of the best in the area - but there was also a vague notion of wanting me to develop “values”.

In my teens, I rejected religion. I resented that the state had been complicit in ensuring that I internalised outdated notions of sectarian identity, and scrimped on its duty to expose me to new beliefs or to challenge my own.

Since 2012, I have been involved in promoting support for the development of secular education. In the past year, we’ve been able to ramp up our campaigning efforts.

At the time of writing, we await the final outcome of our legal challenge against the Scottish government, after it refused to allow young people to opt out of religious observance.

At the moment, senior pupils in England enjoy a right to opt out - without prior approval from their parents - of religious observance (collective worship, as it’s known there). However, young people in Scotland have no similar rights.

I resented that the state had been complicit in ensuring that I internalised outdated notions of sectarian identity

Eventually, after three-and-a-half years of lobbying on this issue, all we had managed to do by last year was elicit assurances from the government that it had no plans to review the law or policy. We decided to take the radical step of challenging what we believed were unlawful actions.

The government’s reticence to embrace this issue suggests to me that either, as it has said publicly, it is committed to the inclusion of religious observance, or it is wary of a confrontation with faith groups.

Of course, there will always be those who want to maintain the Christian influence over our schools. But according to a poll in The Times in December, 38 per cent of adults in Scotland want to see religious observance in schools scrapped, and a further 17 per cent support calls for young people to be allowed to opt out.

I invite readers to consider whether the system is worth defending. The requirement for religious observance remains unreformed since 1872. In September, the government said that “religious observance…is a whole-school activity which should be inclusive of faith and non-faith pupils”.

The non-statutory guidance on religious observance says that its purpose is to allow for “spiritual development”; I wonder how this will be measured in the new standardised assessments?

In short, surely it’s time to scrap all religious observance in schools?

Gary McLelland is chief executive of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He was formerly education policy officer for the Humanist Society Scotland