Bringing RE to Life: Leading Lived Experience Encounters Across Diverse School Communities

Watching eyes widen, jaws drop and students mouth “Wow!” to one another. I am filled with pride as one of the quietest girls in the year belts out a prayer in Arabic. We are standing in the prayer hall of a nearby mosque, and she has volunteered to share this part of her lived faith during our visit.

“Bob, it’s Bob! Bob we have a question…”
Break duty is made all the more enjoyable as I watch 13–14-year-old students chase “Bob the Humanist” around the school grounds as if he is a major celebrity; their interest has bubbled over following his talk about what being a humanist means to him.

Raising the Profile of RE: Starting from Scratch

As I stepped into my current leadership role I was faced with secondary schools which had no discrete Religious Education (RE) lessons and no specialist teachers. Whilst building the subject from the ground up, it soon became apparent that there was some heavy lifting to do in order to raise the profile of the subject with all stakeholders. To impart, within our school communities, an understanding of the value of good quality RE, my approach has been multifaceted, however, something that has proved very beneficial in this campaign has been the inclusion of encounters with the lived experience of different worldviews.

The Ofsted Deep and Meaningful Report (2024) states: ‘Through the RE curriculum, pupils should build knowledge of the religious and non-religious traditions that have shaped the world…this knowledge includes…the diverse lived experiences of individuals who are part of living traditions…high-quality RE curriculums should accurately portray the diversity and complexity of religion and non-religion.’

One Trust, Many Contexts: Responding to Demographic Diversity

Although many of our trust schools are within the same local authority it became clear that the student experience within our RE lessons was very different due to the individual demographics of our sites. For instance, one school has a very rich cultural diversity, with fifty-two different first languages spoken, 48% of the student population having English as an additional language (EAL) and 21% declaring their worldview as non-religious. Whereas, another site has 7% of its student population denoted as EAL and 54% declaring their worldview as non-religious. During lesson observations this contrast was often readily apparent, with some students immersed into a classroom dialogue involving a variety of lived experiences, whilst others resembled an echo chamber in which only the teacher could try to utilise classroom resources to depict a range of worldviews. Having the privileged position of being able to see RE lessons across this range of settings made it clear to me that engaging with the lived experiences of those outside our individual school communities was going to be a vital part of the curriculum I was building.

From Virtual Panels to Real-World Encounters

So just as we were emerging from the pandemic and putting “bubble teaching” behind us, I harnessed everyone’s newfound skills for video calls and organised our first encounter with visiting speakers. The format was a worldviews panel that was, due to Covid restrictions, delivered virtually to students across several schools simultaneously. There were some real positives to come out of this event and student feedback indicated that they enjoyed interacting with a diverse group of people. However, it became clear that to make a real success of this, face to face encounters were going to be preferred and students wanted to hear voices from their own local community (the virtual format had meant the speakers had represented communities from up and down the country).

Since this we have worked hard as a team to build an entitlement curriculum in which all students are given the opportunity to visit local places of worship and engage with talks from visiting speakers. This has been bolstered by a supportive CEO who ensured curriculum time and school budgets would enable us to enact our plans. At present all Year 7 and 8 students are given the opportunity to visit a mosque and gurdwara, Year 9 students engage with a worldviews panel and Year 10 students experience a workshop delivered by the National Holocaust Centre.

Helpful hints for embedding lived experience in RE:

• Dream big (but start small). From the outset we thought carefully about the types of experiences that would deepen student learning beyond the classroom and when they would complement our curriculum. Although we were aiming for equity across all sites we started by rolling out the program at a couple of school sites, enabling us to iron out any issues before running it across all schools.
• Think local. We have found the experiences to be much more impactful when students see the worldviews reflected from their own communities, whilst being mindful of avoiding echo chambers which meant a trip to the nearest city for some of our schools.
• It’s all in the planning. Personally, I think this can be easily overlooked once you are bogged down in risk assessments and coach bookings. But taking the time to carefully select appropriate speakers and places to visit can truly be the making of your event. From recceing the place in advance to meeting the speakers ahead of time (it is important they are clear in your aims of the experience). Some examples of preparation I’ve done that paid off in the long-term include:

1. Established clear boundaries i.e. students will not partake in worship activities during the visit
2. Meeting with a speaker ahead of time to plan and tailor a session, I could then confidently share with parents/carers the aim of the session and it removed any on the day nerves of not knowing what would be presented
3. Working with class teachers to build into lesson time an explanation of what students could expect during an upcoming visit and provide an opportunity to plan questions for students to ask to encourage dialogue rather than tumbleweed silence
4. Sending specific topics ahead of time helps provide structure to the session and affords the worldview panel members thinking time
5. Creating a contract all visiting speakers sign and adhere to, this has proved useful as a tool to provide constructive feedback for subsequent interactions.

• Explain why. I’ve found it beneficial to engage with all stakeholders to share an understanding of why an event is happening; making sure that staff, students and parents understand the aims of the event. Be prepared for parent/student pushback and consider how you are going to tackle this. Some strategies we have found beneficial include:

1. Inviting the senior leadership team to the events so they can see first-hand the benefits
2. Providing discussion questions for at home
3. Getting the students to write up their experience of the event and share this on the school websites/social media.

• Collaborate. Utilise the experience of others around you, for instance, sharing the contact details of effective speakers. We also took the opportunity to collaborate with the Geography department, spending the morning completing our places of worship visit and in the afternoon completing an urban field study. This allowed us to share the coach fare but also allowed students to see that we can share interest and skills across our subject specialisms.

Developing these experiences has afforded us much more than raising the profile of the subject within our school communities. We have seen a deepening of student understanding of different worldviews, the development of their interpersonal skills (considering how to interact with others, how to prepare to visit an unfamiliar space, etc.) but also fostered relationships across communities.