Dear Nick Gibb, your faith has moved me

Nick Gibb, Minister of State for Schools, spoke to the AGM of the RE Council on 3 May 2012, and answered questions (see the REC’s website for the full transcript: http://www.recouncil.org.uk/images/stories/word_documents/Nick_Gibb_RE_Council_AGM_Speech_May2012.doc). Here Mark Chater, Director of the Culham Institute, offers his own response.

Dear Mr Gibb

Thank you for coming to address representatives of the RE community on 3 May 2012. Thanks, also, for being willing to answer questions from the floor, unscripted – a refreshing departure from the norm with politicians. I think that most of the 100 or so delegates appreciated this, even though we were baffled by your understanding of RE.

There are three types of discussion we could have about your speech, and I cannot do justice to them all. One is about standards – and your repetition of the flawed and misleading PISA statistics to create a panic about our international position. Even so, any reasonable person in RE would support the need to raise standards in our subject: the questions are how, and with what resources, and what do you think we have been trying to do all these years before you came along? Another discussion we could have is about structures, and the relationship between structural change and raising standards – and on this, your OECD-inspired faith in the academisation process will be tested over time, and may be proved right. It is clear, however, that you are in a muddle about local determination and RE. Apparently, local authorities are not fit to run schools, but it’s OK for RE to remain in local authority control? SACREs and local syllabuses remain statutory but must find their own way in the new educational free market? We’ll need to come back that one later.

You bravely waded in to the importance and value of RE, and it is in this discussion that I think you floundered most catastrophically.

You opened by suggesting that religious education

‘acts as a Rosetta Stone between different subjects: unlocking our ability to make links and understand the great advances in science, politics, commerce, the arts and history.’

In some ways a lovely image – except that it appears to make RE something that has worth because of what it can do for other subjects – a sort of service subject, enriching and illustrating others. You offered three examples:

‘A pupil who understands the religious context can walk into a nation’s great art collections and appreciate the nuanced iconography of paintings by men like Giotto and El Greco.

 

A pupil who understands the restrained faith of the Quakers can appreciate the growth of London today as a financial powerhouse.

 

A pupil who understands the great mathematical advances and discoveries under the Caliphs can appreciate how the first great European explorers navigated to new worlds.’

So we in RE are very glad to know that we can be of service to the cultural, economic, mathematical and geographical understanding of pupils.

But – is that really all? Is that what you think RE is for? If so, it is extremely worrying and suggests that you have not paid attention to the many recorded higher purposes of our subject: its capacity to contribute to pupils’ spiritual and moral development, to human flourishing in individuals and communities; and its claim that religions and beliefs, the questions they pose and the answers they propose, are worthy of study in their own right, and need no justification on loan from other subjects.

The reductionist view of RE that you offered us is just breath-takingly bad. I don’t know how to interpret it: as evidence of a shallow, reactionary mind; as a studied insult; or as the unfortunate outcome of inadequate briefing.

In passing – is the Caliphate and early Islamic culture really only worth studying because of its contribution to western navigation and conquest? But perhaps you didn’t mean that.

Then there is your touching faith in the inspection process, that

‘Ofsted will pick up on schools that are genuinely failing to meet their obligations and we will make absolutely sure that head teachers are held accountable… we have specifically asked Ofsted to make judgements against how well each and every state school meets the spiritual and moral needs of their pupils during their time in education.’

Erm, could we try for a reality check here please? Spiritual and moral development is not the same as RE. It can be offered through every subject of the curriculum, and through collective worship regardless of whether RE is taught well, badly, or even at all. In fact there are schools getting away with neglect of RE right now. We even know where some of them are.  Therefore, I’m afraid your faith in Ofsted is not particularly reassuring for the RE community.

To come back to structures and RE. You clearly believe that local determination of RE is a good idea.

‘We will not make the mistake of prescribing a national programme of study: particularly when we know local determination of the curriculum is hugely important to meeting the specific needs and traditions of local communities.’

This is so wearying, one hardly knows where to start in demolishing it. What makes you think that local determination works in meeting the needs and traditions of local communities? Perhaps you have some vague geopolitical idea that Bradford is full of Baha’is whereas Wiltshire has white Christians, and that they can all have the RE they want, thanks to local agreed syllabuses. But – a point so obvious, I am embarrassed to make it – shouldn’t education be preparing young people for life in a globalised world? And – I am bored nearly to death by the need to repeat this – what makes you confident that local religious communities have either the capacity or the right to determine religious education? In reality, agreed syllabuses do not limit themselves to local religions; they have a substantial homogeneity when it comes to breadth of content – which, by your logic, rather undermines the case for having them.

‘We will not make the mistake of prescribing a national programme of study’ – we all  understand that you don’t want to prescribe; but we think you ought to take responsibility. The weaknesses of RE have structural roots, and you can do something about it. That is a risk you just don’t want to take; and you’ve found a convenient rearguard justification for your pusillanimity: it’s called local determination.

But – to be fair – thank you for the 50 extra places in initial teacher education; thank you for that interesting reference to the ‘maturity of our religious belief’ and the ‘discipline of doubt’; and thank you for your reminder about high standards and rigour.

Your faith is simple; will it change in the face of evidence, I wonder? Cardinal Newman, a man celebrated for his love of learning, is also famous for having remarked that change is a sign of life, and that to be human is to change often. So, exasperated though we are by your failure to ‘get’ RE this time, we hope for the best. Perhaps we shall see you again.

Yours sincerely

Mark Chater

Summer 2012