Kampala — RELIGIOUS studies should be taken out of the school curriculum, the Government has proposed.

"From a strategic and ideological point of view, it was not appropriate for the Government to condone the continuous teaching of religious education in schools.

The activity should be left to home and the churches," states a Cabinet memorandum that was last week circulated to the parliamentary social services committee.

The Cabinet also agreed that if the church continued to charge tithe (ndobolo) on students in schools where they were the founding bodies, it would be prudent for the Government to consider them private schools and to gradually disengage itself from aiding them.

"The Church was charging tithe purely for economic reasons. The education minister should study the possibility of paying ground rent to the founding bodies as a trade-off for the tithe," adds the memo.

The minister was asked to consider the cost of the proposal and submit the estimates to the Cabinet.

Government was also concerned that faith-based schools resisted recruitment of head teachers who were not of their faiths.