Parents are today united in shock after a Catholic faith school unanimously turned atheist. All pupils and teachers turned up to work believing that it would be another ordinary, Catholic, sort of day, and left school acknowledging that there is no God.

The boy, 12-year-old Piper Brownsocks from Bromley, is currently grounded by his parents as school governers attempt to persuade teachers to get back onto the path of God.

The incident took place during a school debate on the New Testament got “out of hand”. As Piper veered off-script, one teacher ran onto the stage, but was rugby-tackled by other teachers who were “keen to hear” what the youngster had to say.

“It was such a convincing argument,” said teacher Belinda Purvey. “When he started explaining how notions of God – or Gods – had changed over the millenia, and that basically, our religion is just an offshoot of Judaism, which is all made-up anyway, well – I thought – what have I been doing with my life?”

“I mean, I’d always wondered about the Old Testament anyway, all that burning fire and Yahweh stuff didn’t really make much sense – and Piper just blew it all out of the water. Now I’ll have my Sunday mornings clear so I can have a lie-in, and I’ve got Piper to thank for that.”

Fellow classmates were quick to follow Piper’s lead and reject the path of God. “I didn’t believe in Darwinism until yesterday,” admitted Sally Funicular, age 11. “But when you think about it – it makes sense, and we’re just evolved cells that live and die and there’s nothing before and there’s nothing after. You can either get depressed about it or you can just live your life and enjoy it. That’s what I intend to do, by going shopping with my parents’ credit cards.”

Indeed, the sudden abandoning of religion in favour of hardline atheism has caught many off-guard. “What are we going to teach?” mused newly liberated headmaster Gerard Canewielder. “All these years, I’ve been teaching doctrine until it came out of my ears – and Piper’s right – it’s just doctrine. Mumbo Jumbo designed for another century as a softly softly Judaism for the gentiles and then twisted and twisted and twisted – well, you get the picture. We all agree with Piper now and all these textbooks are worthless. Thank you Tony Bloody Blair and your faith schools.”

“Perhaps we’ll read Lord of the Flies or something. I don’t know any more.”

The parents of Piper Brownsocks released a terse statement last night, saying “Piper is a very naughty boy, and we’re sure he deeply regrets what is clearly a temporary toying with atheism. We’ll be sending him back to school to apologise and reaffirm the Catholic faith. In the meantime, he can say a couple of hail maries and everything will be OK.”