Prayer rooms formally prohibited in schools

Quebec schools will no longer be able to have a room for prayer. The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, made the official announcement by publishing a ministerial directive adopted on Wednesday. According to the government, the objective is to preserve the secular nature of public schools as provided for in the State Secularism Act.

“Schools are places of learning and not places of worship,” Minister Drainville wrote on Twitter.

In the directive also posted on Twitter, he demands that school service centers ensure “in each of their schools and each of their centers, that no place is used, in fact and ostensibly, for the purposes of religious practices such as manifest prayers or other similar practices”.

It’s following revelations concerning prayer rooms established in Laval schools that the Minister Drainville had promised to completely ban prayer in schools. Muslim students used these places to pray during Ramadan.