A Level Religious Studies: The case for curricular revolution?

The conceptual position of the recent Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) was to favour long-term, incremental improvements over dramatic changes.  A Levels were framed as unproblematic, and pragmatically one can see the case for leaving alone ‘what works.’

However, the obvious problem is that Religious Studies and Philosophy specifications at A Level contain very little on the lives and works of women.

Women’s works are excluded even where their contributions to the disciplines are obvious.  In some specifications, for example, students may learn about abortion from exclusively male perspectives.  Sometimes women’s ideas are included but unreferenced, and sometimes there are simply missed opportunities to include an accurate history of ideas from around the globe, e.g. on human rights, the environment, ethics of care, bioethics or immigration.  In 1979, Adrienne Rich commented on the ‘relentless excision of the female[1]’, which necessitates a kind of ‘revolution in permanence’.  It seems remarkable that this should still be the case in 2026.

Others have of course drawn attention to the issue, such as the End Sexism In Schools charity, and a student-led petition in 2015. Awarding bodies have started to signpost supplementary resources, and these are welcome. Meanwhile, teachers across the country create their own more equitable resources, ensuring representation of diverse voices.

However, as long as there is no or little requirement to study women in ‘official’ curricular, the message to students is clear: women’s works are not worthy of study. I see this as an urgent, inescapable moral problem – an example of a profound, overlooked curricular injustice that may cause harm.  Collective efforts to address harmful attitudes to women and girls nationally are undermined if they are effectively silenced in the curriculum.  Likewise for Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 (ensuring acquisition of knowledge to promote gender equality and cultural diversity).

To help counter some of these concerns in my last school, we co-created a weekly book club with students in KS4-5, with a view to diversifying the reading materials on offer.  This was light-touch but allowed for meaningful discussion and debate.  A few texts that have worked well and can be adapted for different settings include:

Kristin Shrader Frechette – Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy (2002).  This book offers an accessible application of the philosophy of science, containing case studies such as the decision to dump chemical waste in locations most affecting already disenfranchised minority groups.  Highlighting the extent of human suffering may help students to engage intellectually and emotionally with the subject matter, and provide interesting stimulus for group discussions.

Mary Midgely – What is Philosophy For? (2018).  In her final work, Midgely reminded us of her definition of philosophy – not as the solving of one fixed set of puzzles, but instead finding ‘many particular ways of thinking’ to help us ask fresh questions and navigate new challenges.  Midgely offers her stance on the mind/body problem, verificationism, religious worldviews in a digital age and, of course, our treatment of animals.

Dan McQuillan – Resisting AI (2022). This book draws on the work of several female philosophers to raise ethical objections to generative AI, including Hannah Arendt on institutional thoughtlessness, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on epistemic violence, and Judith Butler on performativity.  This could provide a good level of stretch and challenge for students thinking of studying ethics related courses at university.

Whilst I have been encouraged by high levels of student engagement with these ideas, it must be said that adding more diverse thinkers to old specifications is not enough. More radical reform will require careful, detailed scholarship on the extent and implications of omissions. Pupils deserve access to a range of religious and philosophical responses – both contemporary and historical – to existential questions.

[1] ‘What does a woman need to know?’