My Leadership Journey: What is it Like to be an ‘RE and Christian Distinctiveness Lead’ in a Mixed Multi-Academy Trust?

I had spent most of the morning speaking with and listening to different adults working within the school and also with some of the children. It had been a busy morning and I had gathered lots of information to support the school in moving forward. It was now my penultimate meeting and a small group of children aged 8-11 were packed into a corner of the headteacher’s office. They were about to talk about religious education and what they enjoyed about it. The children had obviously been ‘cherry-picked- as each child was able to talk about their learning and some of the experiences they had had. Just before finishing, I decided to ask them why they thought we did RE in schools. One of the younger boys raised his hand. ‘What’s good is that even if you don’t believe in a religion, you find it comfortable to learn about other religions.’

He didn’t elaborate on this statement, but I understood exactly what he was trying to say. He was sharing that he didn’t follow an organised religion or worldview, but he could see there was real value in learning about what different people believed, even though they may be different to his own beliefs. I was amazed by his wisdom and from someone so young. This is what makes this job so brilliant!

Originally, my role was created because the CEO of our trust wanted someone to spend some time focusing on the trust’s responsibilities towards their church schools that had recently been raised by our local diocese. This perhaps explains the dual aspects of this role.

A developing role

So it was that in September 2018, I started working on a part-time basis as the ‘Christian Distinctiveness MAT Lead’. Even with this title, I was also given the responsibility for overseeing and raising standards in RE for all primary schools. This was alongside being fully responsible for a Year 3/4 class in the school I was still teaching in. In fact, for the first three years, I was teaching every morning with an HLTA teaching in the afternoons so I could do my new role. It was a tricky balance.

My first year was spent finding my feet. I visited our seven church schools, trying to prepare them for SIAMS as best I could. The whole thing was still new to me, but I did have 10 hours a week to work out what a SIAMS inspection would look like and what schools would need in place to demonstrate their church school distinctiveness.

Within six months, our first church school had had its SIAMS inspection with an ‘excellent’ grading. I couldn’t accept much of an accolade for this, but I had offered some guidance where I felt it was appropriate.

By 2019 there were eight church schools in my trust and soon, there was a second SIAMS inspection, with a ‘good’ outcome. I could safely say that I had managed to support this school more closely (even taking on the mantle of foundation governor for a year) so I was happy to accept some thanks here.

In March 2020, my involvement changed quite a bit. I ended up teaching Year 6 in my school (something I hadn’t done before), but I was also planning RE work for children in Years 2-5 within the trust, who were now learning at home. At this point, RE still didn’t feature in my role title, but it was a big part of what I was doing.

Support and challenge

By September 2021, I started to explore other RE avenues to support and challenge me in my role, something I fully recommend to others.

I signed up to anything that might support me;

• NATRE membership was essential, getting the magazine and resources three times a year and accessing the website.
• Back in 2018, I started attending my local Learn Teach Lead RE (LTLRE) meeting which was run by two teachers – primary and secondary. It just so happened that the primary teacher was moving on and so I asked if I could take her place, which opened up lots more opportunities for me, including training, conferences and RE contacts.
• A Farmington scholarship on ‘Teaching Christianity through Art’ allowed me to explore the wealth of artwork available online to support teachers in using the Understanding Christianity resource. Next time, I hope to research visual imagery and artwork to support the teaching of other religions and worldviews.
• The Shared Space project. The University of Bristol and NATRE worked in partnership to investigate the claim that RE promotes warmer community relations through knowledge exchange. Teachers from across the phases worked with academics, developing our subject knowledge and going on to create a unit of work and lessons with lived examples, real and imagined, to introduce pupils to different branches of Islam with the enquiry question, ‘What does it mean to be a Muslim in Britain today?’ The unit challenges stereotyping and the idea that ‘all Muslims’ are the same and also supported pupils to enter into meaningful dialogue around diversity within worldviews. You can find the resources here.

A full time role

I was ready to make the move to full time advisory work, but initially this proved difficult. I was keen to keep the RE role within my trust and many of the advisory roles on offer were full time.
In May 2024, I was resigned to spend another year doing my split role, this time teaching within a Year 5/6 class with children I had taught in Year 3/4. It was just as we were reaching the end of Term 5, the point of no return, that my CEO emailed me to say that the local diocese wanted to offer me a seconded role three days a week as a school advisor. I sat up and sent an immediate reply of yes, desperately wanting to add my favourite catchphrase, ‘Does Carmen Miranda wear fruit!’

I have been doing this role since September 2024, both roles work in tandem as the diocese is keen to work more closely with RE and Christian Distinctiveness leads, and my trust is keen to work more closely with the diocese. It was because of this that I was able to enjoy the experience I first started with along with so many other interesting and exciting experiences. And long may it continue!