Comment 14 by QuestioningKat :

Wait, I'm lost. This is obviously a UK school. Was it a public or private school? Were you able to choose allowing your child to go this trip, or not? Could you have chosen to keep your child from going on this trip? Were you given the name of Abernathy Trust prior to the trip? (I'm still having trouble figuring out why people in the UK mix religion with their schools??????)

Sorry, IMO, religions do what religions do. I would expect prayers, Bible reading, and Christian indoctrination to occur because that is what they are and what they do. It's like going to a bar and expecting not to be served alcohol. Did they fully keep all Christian related information about this place from the parents?

Just don't send your kid to religiously affiliated establishments! If this is a public school that required this trip or did not offer a secular option, then that is a bigger problem that needs to addressed. If they misrepresented themselves, in the US, their would be a lawsuit for misrepresentation and other violations.

The UK system is very complicated to an outsider (of which I am one). I did a bit of reading on wikipedia last time this came up. There are a lot of schools that were historically run by religious groups and still are. The UK does after all have a state religion: the Church of England. There are also a lot of new "faith" schools and academies being set up by religious groups. There is a summary here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_school

Notice that the notion of "public" and "private" doesn't really make sense in the UK with schools whose operating costs are provided by the government but the building and the school ethos are provided by the CofE.

English education includes many schools linked to the Church of England, which controls governance and admittance while the funding comes from the state. At voluntary-aided schools, the Church pays for 10% of projects; at voluntary-controlled schools, the Church contributes only the building itself.[5] The Church sets the ethos of the schools and influences selection of pupils; at voluntary aided schools, usually half or more of the school's places are reserved for "actively involved" members of the Church determined by local clergy.[5]

For an individual parent it often comes down to not having a real choice. Note also that no matter what school your kids go to the schools is required to provide them with a weekly "act of collective worship".

Michael