Religion in Public Schools

"Being exposed to the COE in my childhood made me a devout and passionate Christian for the rest of my life." - said by no one ever.

As an American who just married and moved to the UK and plans to have children in the next few years, I was surprised that there is so much religion taught in government funded schools.  I can't speak from experience regarding in what manner and how much religious education is incorporated in the schools, but I completely support religious education in a manner that educates students about history and/or theoretical and philosophical practices so students gain a broader understanding and appreciation.  However, I do not support religious education presented in a manner that attempts to influence a student's beliefs or engages him/her in traditional practices of any particular religion or denomination.  Can anyone provide any information about how religion is approached in schools? 
Thanks!
JBarron

Can anyone provide any information about how religion is approached in schools? 

I attended a Church of England primary school so we said prayers in our morning assemblies and learned about Christianity and the bible in school. I don't remember too much about specifics though, but I do remember lessons and videos about things like Diwali and Hinduism as well as Christianity (we were not an ethnically diverse school as the local population was 98% white British).

For secondary school , I went to a non-religious state school (again, not ethnically diverse) and we just attended generic Religious Education lessons. We were taught about many different religions (I don't really recall covering all that much about Christianity) and it was about teaching us about world religions and the diversity in the world - the RE lessons were basically a mixture of religion and sociology.

In secondary school, I remember learning about Rama and Sita and making Hindu masks, I remember drawing the 5 Pillars of Islam, I remember watching a film about Auschwitz and how Jews were treated in WWII, but we also watched films like Rainman and learned about society and human behaviour as well.

The BBC education site has some examples of the kind of RE topics that are taught in secondary schools: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/websites/11_16/topic/re.shtml and in primary schools: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/websites/4_11/topic/re.shtml

I am essentially non-religious now (although strangely enough, I always identify as 'Christian' if someone asks me - force of habit, I guess ), but I love the fact that religion is taught in government-funded schools. I think it goes a long way to teaching kids about the world and about being tolerant of other religions and people who are from different backgrounds to their own.

Religion in the UK is considered a private thing - people generally aren't vocal about their own religion and people don't usually talk about it, so you don't really get it 'shoved down your throat' like you might do in the US. So, despite the fact that we don't have separation of church and state, religion is downplayed in the UK, a person's religion is considered their own private affair and it's not really spoken about in public. I've felt much more pressurised to be 'religious' in the US than I ever have in the UK (I am British born and raised, but I have US relatives in the South and I've spent 2 years of my life in the US - visiting and on student visas).