This summer we are delighted to be hosting a new blog series from our vibrant and energetic subject community! Each of the main RE/R&W organisations will be sharing their reflections on 2020-21, and looking forward to the coming academic year. We will be posting one blog per week and are very grateful to the Chairs/CEOs of these organisations for contributing their thoughts. We start the series with the Religious Education Council of England and Wales.
Kathryn Wright
CEO, Culham St Gabriel’s
We are delighted to host this blog for Culham St Gabriels to talk about AREIAC’s work to support high quality RE.
We are the first Co-chairs of AREIAC and we began in our role September 2020. If you are not sure what AREIAC does, we are an organisation for anyone who is a Religious Education inspector, adviser or consultant, whether they are part time or full time, new to the role or with years of experience. Our members come from all fields – some are Diocesan, others are independent and some are currently serving teachers who advise other schools on RE. We have also welcomed the Culham St Gabriel leadership programme candidates to our meetings and conference as part of their own leadership development in RE. We are here to provide advice, challenge, leadership, training and support for all those who advise others on multi-faith religious education in all schools and colleges.
AREAIC has an executive, organising committee and regional groups which meet regularly to share and develop resources, to support advisers and teachers and to discuss national issues around excellent religious education.
In our first year one of our priorities has been to reach out to as many advisers as possible through our programme of meetings and events throughout the year. For the first time this year we have introduced online webinars and an RE book club for our members as part of their professional development. Topics have included curriculum development, the future national framework for RE, Dharmic religions and the Cadbury lectures. We will be building on these in the year ahead and working with Culham on projects such as the RExChange programme to ensure that RE advisers have plenty of opportunities for such development on a regular basis.
Last year with help from our membership secretary Stacey Burman and our web adviser Paul Hopkins, we updated and added further information to our website so that it is current and helpful for users. It now regularly features our Twitter feed, contains our members’ details for further advice and connects members with CPD that is of interest to them.
We continued to engage with other RE stakeholders throughout the year and we were part of the steering group with Culham St Gabriels developing the Leadership Programme for RE. This, of course, has built on the fabulous pioneering work of AREIAC through the Revitalise programme. Many of AREIAC’s advisors are involved as mentors on this programme and we have actively welcomed newer RE leaders through this route. We would like to encourage as many of these leaders as possible to join AREIAC in the future so do contact us for further information.
We produce two newsletters a year for our members and we have also introduced bulletins for the first time this year, which are shorter but keep our members up to date throughout the year.
A number of our members have been involved with other projects throughout the year, including the young ambassador project, the 5 Cities media project and the joint Collective Worship project with NASACRE. Information about these will be shared with members during the forthcoming year.
Growing the membership of AREIAC has been a priority for us this year and especially reaching out to advisers who are part time and working in schools. We have established a working group on membership that has met throughout the year and which has resulted in a new part time membership rate. Details of these are on the AREIAC website.
The highlight for us this year was the two day online conference held in July this year which many of our members and other guests attended. We were delighted with the positive feedback from this and we look forward to planning a face to face conference with our conference organiser Gill Vaisey next year in July.
A key project for us to work on this coming year is developing our response to research in AREIAC and we look forward to working with our AREIAC research group that can report to members on a more consistent basis in 2022 and build on the work started in our members’ CPD programme.
Finally, our review of the year would not be complete without thanks to our executive committee, who are always supportive of everything we do and who provide consistently good advice and expertise for us to draw on. We also would like to thank all of you for your own work in ensuring high quality RE in 2020-2021 and we look forward to working with you in 2021-2022,
Justine Ball and Julia Diamond-Conway, Co-chairs of AREIAC