This is not news. Studies have shown this in the past.
What interests me is the impact this will have on the proposed Ethics classes as an alternative to SRE in schools here in Australia. Where are they going to get all the volunteers from? Here at PBC we have great and committed teachers and we need a team of at least four just for Petersham Public School. All studies show that church goers volunteer much more regularly for this sort of thing.
There is a groundswell of public support for the idea of 'religion free ethics' but (ISTM) no one has thought through how to provide such a thing. My prediction is that there will be a flurry when it all starts but it won't take long until most schools find that they cannot find enough parents willing to come in (during working hours) to teach their kids every week during term time.
Teaching is hard work. Give it a few years and the government will find it has a stark choice: either pay teachers to teach Ethics (but what abut SRE?) or accept that only about 10% of schools can actually carry this off on a regular basis.
