Religious Education Teaching and Training in England: current provision and future improvement.

Report by the RE Teaching Commission of the RE Council.

A Summary of the report is available for download: Summary Report

The full report (100pp) can be downloaded from here, or a hard copy ordered for £7.50 from:

RE Council
Voluntary Sector Centre
76 Shoe Lane
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EC4A 3JB

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KEY ISSUE

• The National Strategy for RE proposals respond to the urgent need for renewal of Religious Education. Fathoming what others have done and do in challenging evil, making sense of death, being moved to talk of God, and testing what’s true –  all make for good education.  RE has been neglected. It is under-resourced. Children, young people and society deserve better.
• The government has rightly responded to the need to promote cohesion in our diverse communities. However, more needs to be done to combat the wide spread ignorance about religions and beliefs that exists in many parts of our society. Well trained teachers are in an ideal position to promote respect for all, self awareness and open-mindedness, but are too often inadequately prepared for the task.
• Throughout all public education from infant school through to college or university it is reasonable to expect that appropriate ways and means will be used to assist every child/pupil/student to become critically intelligent regarding what and why they believe and value as they do.
• Traditionally in this country this area of curriculum has been specially though not exclusively represented by RE. That provision continues and in many primary and secondary school settings is excellent and highly popular.
• A review however indicates that this is not consistently the case, and indeed it shows that RE provision is considerably poorer than other curriculum strands. That evidence is comprehensively collated in Report of the RE Teaching Commission.
• The REC is therefore proposing a coordinated initiative on the part of the DfES in continuing partnership with the REC which will involve all the relevant government agencies.
• This National Strategy for RE strengthens and builds on existing structures:
  • locally, it proposes the monitoring of the quality of RE in all local schools and colleges through the statutory Standing Advisory Councils, which represent the interests of  faith communities, teachers and politicians
  • regionally, it proposes intensive education and training for primary class teachers and secondary specialists;
  • nationally, it proposes steps to ensure that statutory provision and the working assumptions of government agencies operate with a shared vision of  future enrichment from Religious Education.