Thoughts on recommendations 1&2

Recommendation 1 says that we should change the name of the subject to “Religion and Worldviews”. This is a good thing as it makes things broader and includes the study of non-religious worldviews, which are increasing in the UK. Young people should be aware about these. It also opens up the awareness of diversity within beliefs. You can belong to the same religion as someone else but have a different worldview.

Recommendation 2 says Religion and Worldviews should be a statutory requirement for all publicly funded schools. Studying the subject is so important; it should be compulsory for all students.

I think the recommendations on RE are part of a journey. We cannot achieve many of them overnight and Recommendations 1 and 2 especially are likely to be further down the road. Take Recommendation 1. RE is called by various names in schools at the moment. Many schools do not teach non-religious worldviews at all. There is a growing understanding that this should happen and indeed that trying to plan the RE around units of study entirely of one religion is really difficult – a new way of looking at planning the RE curriculum is needed. Teachers will need to learn about how to do this, to understand what the term worldview means in this context and this will take time. Likewise, as time passes, people may begin to change the name of their departments to R&WV and we will start referring to RE in that way but this will not happen immediately.