Agenda item

For information and further discussion

Submitted – for further discussion the RE Council of England and Wales Draft Handbook entitled ‘Religion and Worldviews in the Classroom: developing a Worldviews Approach’ and is primarily written to assist those developing syllabuses and curriculum for religious education with a religion and worldviews approach.

Members discussed the draft handbook which is the outcome of first phase of a three-year project on behalf of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales and its aim to take the idea of a Religion and Worldviews approach, as advocated by the Commission on Religious Education’s final report and to see what it looks like when applied to a syllabus or curriculum.

Anne Davison advised Members about a research programme that was currently being carried out by the Religious Education Council or England and Wales (REC) on how the draft handbook will look in the classroom with a test scheme of works for religion and worldviews being developed.

It was also agreed that Anne recirculate the draft handbook to all schools and RE Leads within schools.

Members also discussed the feedback from schools on how the new syllabus had been received and Anne advised SACRE that feedback had been good and so far schools were in favour of the syllabus.  She also advised that the training for schools had been carried out as scheduled with attendance by all those schools who had purchased the syllabus, including two additional schools being the Pupil Referral Unit and the authorities special school Beaumont Hill.

It was a requirement for all maintained schools to buy in to the syllabus produced by this local authority, however an additional 7 primary schools had purchased the syllabus, however no secondary schools.

Further discussion ensued on this and Members were interested to learn what the schools that didn’t purchase the local authority syllabus were offering by way of religious education and Members agreed that Anne do some research on this and feedback to the next meeting of SACRE.

Members also questioned why the secondary schools were not adopting the syllabus and that it was important to understand what secondary schools were delivering by way of religious education.  Following this discussion Martin Stand and Stuart Rawle offered to speak with the RE leads in these schools and report back their findings to SACRE at a future meeting.

IT WAS AGREED – (a) That the draft Handbook and report be noted.

(b) That Collective Worship and Religious Education be included as an agenda item at the next scheduled meeting of SACRE on 20 March 2023.