Acceptance, Bridge Building, Critical Thinking, Deference, Empathy – Why Primary RE is Invaluable

Becoming a parent of a primary school pupil has been an amazing learning experience for me so far! It has provided a scaffold for so many crucial parenting conversations. Things like personal safety, managing emotions and friendships and even online safety. I wouldn’t have known where to start. For all the issues there are in our current education system, there is much to be thankful for.

RE for example…

When I attended my son’s recent parent consultation, I was able to look at his books, he was particularly excited to show me his RE book as we have been having more and more conversations about faith at home. As a teacher of Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 English, I was absolutely astounded by the standard of the work being set. I read two comparative essays that compared Christian figures from the bible; tasks that had clearly been set to test skills and knowledge after detailed study of the stories. Previously, I valued RE in Jacob’s curriculum in the same way as I valued other subjects that I am not an expert in.

I imagined that in RE he would learn about other faiths and festivals that I didn’t know much about but reading that work, I saw that RE offers far more than that! It was abundantly clear to me that the subject has amazing cross-curricular implications, connecting to History, English, Geography and Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE). In one essay, Jacob showed that through RE, he was also learning about the world, people, history, and at the same time, was practising pretty high-level reading and writing skills. The label ‘Religious Education’ doesn’t really do justice to the subject.

However, the value of RE extends beyond its academic worth. It also provides children like my son (and hopefully my daughter when she gets to school) with a toolkit for navigating the rich, multicultural society that we are blessed to live in. It celebrates diversity by teaching about the differences between religious festivals and practices, which is vital as Jacob is surrounded by peers and teachers of different religious and non-religious worldviews. He shared with me recently that he believed he saw a member of school staff praying on a mat during the school day; he was able to link this experience with his studies of Islam in his RE lessons. In the same way that learning about physics has helped him to understand cooking in greater depth, learning about religious and non-religious worldviews has helped him to understand the people around him better.

We all exist within a belief system, whether we are members of a recognised religion or not – my household is both Christian and Atheist and that can be a challenge but it is also an amazing opportunity to model how different beliefs can co-exist. Where difference has the potential to divide, RE shows how the most important values underpin every faith; there is far more that unites us than divides us.

The idea that children may leave primary school with no formal religious education is frankly scary. Even in the unlikely event that children don’t encounter people of a variety of religious and non-religious worldviews in their communities, the news and media is saturated with complex and challenging presentations of religions and their histories. We must equip our children with the social and academic skills and knowledge to be able to engage with, interrogate and learn from these encounters.

As a minimum, RE will provide invaluable context for and knowledge of, different faiths but at its best, RE could galvanise our children to make stronger, deeper connections with those around them; motivate them to explore their own spiritual potential and ultimately build a more tolerant, outward-looking and compassionate world.

I’m not sure RE has ever been more relevant to our children than it is now.