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A vision for a better RE future

Yes, RE is sometimes brilliantly taught, and is essential to the curriculum; but its quality is too often undermined by a range of factors. The RE community cannot allow these factors to continue damaging the subject’s quality: we need change in our standards and our structures.

My vision for RE is that it produces pupils who are religiously literate and who function well in a theologically and philosophically diverse world. Imagine an Ofsted survey report on RE in 2020: it reports that 7 out of 10 teachers are clear that the core purpose of RE is to promote religious literacy; that teaching is usually good or outstanding and based on a clear progression pathway; that there is excellent support for primary and secondary teachers of RE; that local bodies help to resource RE and national expectations are consistent and clear; and that RE is an entitlement for all pupils up to 16, parents having accepted the nature of RE and seeing no need to withdraw their children.

This piece describes why change is needed to get to that vision, why it is urgent, who needs to be involved, and how we could get there.

Why is change needed in RE?

Now I’m going to invite you to consider what RE will be like in 2020 if it does not change: marginalized status, outmoded and decaying structures, muddled purpose, and low standards. I wish to place the learning of pupils and students, and the professional needs of teachers, at the heart of the discussion: nothing else is more important. Many teachers, and trainee teachers, are saying that the current structures are not working. Here are some of the reasons why the structures need to change:

• The current rules on RE are so complicated that Heads, governors, Ofsted itself and even civil servants get it wrong. RE is statutory but not national curriculum; compulsory, but you can withdraw; local, but not that local; different if you are an academy; populated by 151 syllabuses, all broadly similar in content, but in form and structure so different and complex that it takes an army of advisers and consultants to interpret – an army we no longer have. The SACRE system created in 1944 is falling apart under the pressure of factors beyond RE’s control.
• Many syllabuses are more prescriptive than NC documents: this makes local determination a restricting factor, not a liberating one. In some cases, the syllabuses contribute to low standards in RE by being too complex and defining RE’s purposes too widely and incoherently. Many trainees struggle to work with the multiplicity and complexity of syllabuses.
• The agreed syllabus system is profoundly out of step with school-led educational reform; it is called local determination, but it is not local enough to allow for school autonomy; it was a local authority monopoly, which is now broken permanently and not coming back. It is also wasteful, intellectually and financially. There will be little if anything left of the system by 2020; it reflects a view of the UK’s religious landscape that was accurate 70 years ago. If we cling to it, we will sink. If we create something new, we can survive and prosper.

Why is the moment now?

This is urgent because the continued weakening of RE’s infrastructure is already damaging the provision of RE in schools. RE lessons are being reduced, RE specialists are hard to find, RE’s quality is inconsistent, and RE’s credibility is confused and contested. If RE continues as it is, by 2020 there will be little left of it outside schools with a religious character. There is a need to act now to prepare a viable future for RE. This means a change in the legal arrangements, and a more simple, straightforward purpose for the subject. Sooner or later, this change has to be made. It will either be a change created by the RE profession and its stakeholders – or a change forced on them by expediency.

Change by 2020, if it involves legislation, needs to be planned from now. From the government point of view, legislation should not take place too close to a general election in 2020. Therefore, a Bill would optimally pass through parliament in 2017-18. For this to be fully prepared and inclusively debated, the work needs to start this year and continue through 2016-17.

We in the RE profession need to start thinking now about the change we want, in time for it to become a reality by 2020. If we work with each other to be clear and united on what we want, we can get it. As a professional community, we have the scholarly knowledge and leadership capacity to create a new future for our subject, on a secure professional educational footing. But we have to start by facing these difficult realities now.

Who needs to be involved?

I am a professional RE teacher, speaking with the experience of one who has the responsibility of working within the present system to strengthen young people’s understanding of religion and belief. I and many other teachers want something better for RE; I want to be in dialogue with those who share this vision and those who do not.

How would it be if Chairs of RE organisations, local and national policy makers, academy providers, churches and other faith/belief communities, worked together with teachers in shaping a model that better served children and teachers? And how would it be if other stakeholders, such as parents, heads, governors, universities, unions, employers, and experts in human rights and democratic participation, less immediately concerned with RE but still relevant, were to lend us their expertise? I, you, we must take ownership of a national discussion about better standards and structures in RE. We must ensure that this discussion is informed and inclusive.

How can we get there?

RE needs to move from the current situation of low status, weak and decaying structures, confused purpose, and low standards, to a better future for RE learners: high status, modern structures, rigour and engagement, and better alignment with the exciting real world of religion and belief in the 21c.

All pupils are entitled to a high quality RE which enables them to encounter and understand the diversity of religion and belief and makes them religiously literate. We need a nationally defined legal entitlement for all pupils, which each school can contextualise and mediate to suit its own situation, ethos and character.

Up till now, the discussion has tended to polarize ‘local’ and ‘national’. But RE is bigger than ‘local or national’: we need to break this binary assumption. RE is global and national and local. Young people encounter religion and belief as a global reality and in their immediate locality. As a nation concerned with excellence, we have a right to set national expectations in RE for every child. As a nation concerned with peace, justice, security and our changing cultural heritage, we also see a need for national expectations. Local communities identify how these expectations could take many different forms at school and community level. RE can have a new settlement that reflects the best of global, national and truly local inputs. We can create this together, focusing on what is best for teachers and pupils.

There should be a national commission to look into the place of RE within our education system. It should focus on the law on RE and propose a new settlement, to support a new vision for the place of RE within the curriculum. It should also propose other initiatives to promote high quality RE. The commission should first gather evidence comprehensively from teachers and other stakeholders. The exact task of the commission has yet to be defined; it could take the form of three questions, such as:

• To what extent are the present legal arrangements for RE fit for the purposes of providing a curriculum of academic challenge and interest for pupils, and creating citizens capable of living effectively in a diverse nation?
• What new legal arrangements and structures should be enacted to promote RE as an academically rigorous subject that contributes to a positive public understanding of religious diversity?
• What forms of training, support, resourcing, and voluntary association would benefit teachers and trainers in providing excellent RE in the classroom?

An alternative set of questions might be:

• How can the quality of the pupils’ learning experience in RE be improved in English schools?
• What legal and structural factors create barriers to excellence in RE, and what changes are needed?
• What additional forms of training, support, resourcing, and voluntary association would benefit teachers, and how can they be provided?

Working in the context of an inclusive, informed and dynamic national debate, the commission’s task would be to answer the above questions, based on the evidence they have gathered and their own expert interpretation necessary to give coherence to the evidence. The commission should take up to 12 months, in time for this government to legislate in mid-term, ie 2017-18, at the point of lowest political risk for them. This is a window of opportunity that might not come again.

RE needs a settlement that will be evidentially based, and will having staying power through years of political change. Therefore, the commission needs to be independent of the current government, while having observers from the government and opposition parties. It should be an open, inclusive process: high challenge, low threat.

These questions have to be answered for the pupils and teachers of now and the future. Many RE teachers are clear and determined that we can do better than the present arrangements, but we do not have all the answers. RE is a subject that is ready to govern itself by new rules.

Conclusion – and invitation to conversation

I want an RE which has real intellectual integrity, reflects the reality of religion and belief in the modern world , and makes an excellent contribution to pupils’ education. RE needs the structures that can deliver this. I am not critical of the people who operate in the present structures. I am only able to teach and to present these ideas because of the great work done by leading RE people in the past and present. I owe them my thanks. It is the system that is broken and indefensible, because it is not serving teachers and pupils well enough. I appreciate that change is a challenge for people who have invested time, talent and reputation in the present system. To go for change may well feel like a betrayal, or a risk. But surely the greater risk, the greater betrayal, would be to recognise that our structures are failing, and leading our subject to weakness and irrelevance, to know that we could do better – and to do nothing? What will the teachers who come after us say to us then? The historical moment is on us now. It is dangerous to do nothing and left the situation drift. I hope we will have an informed and inclusive conversation in order to shape our future.

Time to return to Primary RE – much neglected in the social media.

I have written before about why great primary teachers don’t teach great RE: https://reonline.org.uk/blog/the-primary-conundrum/

Two recent social media moments brought this back to mind.

The first moment was a Facebook post asking colleagues to share experiences of the knowledge of scripture pupils bring when they reach Year 7. Most responses indicated pupils arriving with virtually no knowledge of the Bible or indeed of any religious material. Others indicated that any knowledge was fragmented and lacked any real coherent understanding.

I recall the well–publicised decision of Michaela Community School to construct their Year 7 RE curriculum around a basic knowledge and understanding of the Biblical narrative. See Jonathon Porter’s blog about RE at Michaela here: https://tolearnistofollow.wordpress.com/2015/03/.

One statement in the blog is very telling: “But shouldn’t they know this already? Surely they do this in primary school? …… they should, but they don’t.”

The content is not necessarily what I would have chosen BUT the more profound point is the decision to focus on teaching a clearly sequenced body of content in order to develop pupils’ knowledge and understanding of the subject. It is not a crude ‘teaching of random facts’ but a deliberate structuring of core knowledge in order to secure understanding – in this case an understanding of the basic Christian narrative.

This presents a serious challenge to the dominant model of RE which still resists placing the acquisition of knowledge at the heart of our subject.

The second moment was a debate on #REchatUK about subject knowledge. The debate quickly focused on the skills v knowledge issue. Rightly, of course, it was clear that we need both and they cannot be separated from each other. But the important debate is:

Which skills in relation to what content?

The two ways in which we make RE too complicated for primary teachers are:

• the reluctance to spell out a clearly sequenced body of content;
• the determination to retain what one person recently called: “the ‘nice’ feeling style RE which is lovely to teach but ultimately does nothing for our students academically” – the sentimental legacy of ‘learning from’ and latent confessionalism.

Defining a sequenced body of content is urgent. Teachers need to know what they are supposed to be teaching. Guidance needs to start by concentrating on curriculum design – defining the content and deciding how it should be sequenced to ensure pupils acquire a coherent body of knowledge and understanding.

The good news is that there is evidence this is beginning to be addressed through for example the work of the Learn, Teach Lead project in the South-West http://ltlre.org/ and the latest national guidance on RE curriculum design https://reonline.org.uk/religious-education-in-the-new-curriculum/

We need to prioritise straightforward pupil acquisition of subject knowledge and understanding.

And yet many examples of ‘good practice’ involve sentimental models of learning where teachers are asked to link religious material with activity where pupils ‘respond creatively to…’ or ‘reflect deeply on…’ The following are examples of outcomes for RE from the latest edition of RE Today:

• ‘giving pupils opportunities to find peace’
• ‘to support emotional well-being’
• ‘to use understanding, compassion…to identify these values in each other’
• ‘to discuss personal ambitions and values, dreams for their family.. and the local area’
• ‘pupils responding through art work to what love means to them’
• ‘developing a sense of empathy … on why children die so young’

There is a huge discontinuity here. These phrases are offered as examples of good practice and yet, in practice, too many pupils aren’t even developing basic subject knowledge and understanding. Too much personal response; not enough learning about!

This all echoes that crucial finding in the 20123 Ofsted report RE: Realising the Potential: “Too often teachers thought they could bring depth to the pupils’ learning by inviting them to reflect on or write introspectively about their own experience rather than rigorously investigate and evaluate religion and belief.” para 21.

Are we asking too much of primary teachers? Doesn’t RE need to ‘go back to basics’ and provide teachers with straightforward guidance on what content to teach using uncomplicated models of enquiry?

How about this:

“A high-quality religious education will help pupils gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of a diversity of religions and beliefs. It should inspire pupils’ curiosity to know more about the world of religion and belief. Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments, and develop perspective and judgement.”

(loosely based on the aims of the 2013 NC for History)

It’s enough!

Hinduism is often considered challenging to teach as there is no single source of authority to quote, founder to research or tradition to study; instead a range of devoutly followed spiritual paths and variations of practice across India and the world.

Notwithstanding, there are key ideas that can unlock understanding of Hinduism (or Sanatan Dharma as most Hindus would call their faith). The easiest way to access concepts in the classroom is through the Festivals. These neatly encapsulate both abstract Hindu philosophy and rich folk wisdom within the cultural traditions through the associated food, clothes, dance, music, mantras and stories.

A primary Hindu concept is that all creation is inherently divine in nature, and so is to be dealt with as sacred, respected and indeed celebrated. This explains the sheer number of festivals. It has been said that Hindus celebrate everything. The births & victories of deities, the new moon, full moon, new year, equinoxes & solstices, initiations, planting, harvest, plus a range of more localised festivals depending on the geographical region or strength of devotion to local deities.

India has arguably more national holidays than any other country, and prides itself on giving equal respect to non-Hindu religious festival holidays such as Christmas and Eid. This highlights a second key Hindu idea: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: the world is one family.

Interestingly, even though some Festivals are celebrated across India, the linked stories vary widely. The apparent contradictions and profusion of interpretations is possibly not surprising for the world’s oldest living religion, but the fact that Hindus are so relaxed about this highlights a third key Hindu idea, that of inherent pluralism. The ancient Rig Veda states: Truth is One, though the sages know it variously (Ékam sat vipra bahudā vadanti). Thus diversity is considered a natural consequence of being human and having different experiences. Thus India has a tradition of giving asylum to outsiders of all faiths throughout history, recorded as far back as 70BC from the arrival of Jewish people after the Destruction of their Temple, those communities still thrive in India, to famous present day refugees such as the Dalai Lama in exile from Tibet. This natural pluralism makes the range of festivals just as fascinating to Hindus and you may find Hindu children in your classroom offering alternative perspectives the one being taught, which is to be welcomed as it adds to the children’s appreciation of inherent diversity.

In running Hinduism Days, I’ve found certain festivals lend themselves to bringing a creative enrichment element into school as well as exemplifying key underlying Hindu concepts.

Here are a few universally celebrated ones I would recommend that you may know from your Agreed Syllabus.

October 13 2015: Autumn Navratri (as I write this)

Seasonal transition: Nine nights dedicated to the Power Goddess (Shakti) consorts of Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva respectively. This includes an exciting battle story of the primary Shakti, Durga, a traditional circle dance and the opportunity to encounter the notion of God as divine Mother as well as Father.

October 22: Dussehra

commemorates Prince Rama defeating the wicked king Ravana of Lanka (as it was known then) and rescuing his kidnapped wife Princess Sita. There is a traditional burning in effigy of Ravana, not unlike ‘burning the Guy’, as part of celebrating this victory of Good over Evil.

November 11 2015: Diwali

Arguably the most celebrated of modern Hindu festivals, an engaging story of the triumphant return of Rama & Sita to their beloved kingdom after 14 years of exile and many trials. Diwali includes many celebratory traditions, the most symbolic being the lighting of lamps. Occurring on the darkest night of the year, the lights celebrate the victory of hope over despair and light (of knowledge) over the darkness (of ignorance). Hindus clear & decorate their homes and doorsteps to symbolically welcome Divine presence into their homes and hearts as they begin a New (Hindu/Lunar) year.

March 24 2016: Holi

Spring festival of colours – whilst of Hindu origin, traditionally all faiths enter into the fun and joy of celebrating the coming of Spring.

April 8: Spring Navatri – marking the opposite seasonal shift

April 15 Ram Navami: the birth of Rama – a fascinating birth story & opportunity to introduce the key concept of Avatar

Aug 18 Raksha Bandhan – a festival that celebrates selfless human love as exemplified in traditional Hindu society as that between a brother and a sister. Some wonderful classroom learning around this!

Aug 24/25 Krishna Janamashtami the magical midnight birth & childhood stories of the Avatar Krishna

A short summary of each festival (for all faiths, in fact) is available on the RE:Online website’s Festival Calendar https://www.reonline.org.uk/festival-calendar/ by clicking on the relevant month. It also offers links to other relevant websites so worth a look for deeper enquiry.

I hope this has given a good flavour of the range of festivals you could look at in school and ways to both enjoy them and deepen understanding of this fascinating faith!

Sushma Sahajpal

Hindu Representative for Bucks SACRE

Creative education consultant at www.connectar.co.uk

Full-blown academisation will mean that in effect RE will become optional!!

Those wanting to challenge the current legal muddles around RE are facing a period of deep frustration. I recently attended an RE fringe event at the Tory Conference with the new Chair of the Education Select Committee, Neil Carmichael. The messages were clear:

• The current settlement for RE is out of date and needs reform to support improvement in RE
• This Government is set against any discussion of legal change – that will be their top priority as far as RE is concerned – they want to do NOTHING!
• Any Government rhetoric around the importance of RE is superficial; the reality is they aren’t interested – the risks of opening up debate outweigh the benefits
• They are very likely to be in power until 2025 – hope for the best, plan for the worst!
• They are going to drive through their favoured policy – all schools to be free, academies or part of multi-academy trusts (MATs) as soon as possible
• The ‘rules’ around RE in academies are so vague that almost anything goes; we are already seeing some academies abandon any meaningful provision for RE
• Some SACREs are now effectively dysfunctional; none can survive full blown academisation
• The solution of adding RE to the National Curriculum will become an irrelevance if the Government achieve their goal of turning all/most schools into academies or free schools ….. they don’t have to follow the NC
• The debate about whether faith schools should follow a new national RE curriculum ‘minimum entitlement for all pupils’ would also be irrelevant if those schools are academies or parts of MATs. They will be free to ignore any NC and do their ‘own’ thing.

So, what is likely to happen over the next few years?

Here’s my ‘best guess’ scenario – hope for the best, plan for the worst!

• Academisation finally takes over; local authorities have no/few schools left
• The legal arrangements around RE become redundant; they lie un-reformed but dormant
• Local determination becomes meaningless – agreed syllabuses ossify and are left to fester; SACREs die out and the Government doesn’t bother to tidy up legislation
• The culture of leaving Governors and Heads to make decisions about their school curriculum becomes dominant; the national curriculum has no statutory force
• RE effectively becomes ‘optional’ – strong in some schools (and protected in the faith school sector) but effectively disappearing in many schools.

Academisation means in effect RE will become optional outside the faith school sector!!

So, what is to be done? Hope for the best, plan for the worst!

We need to face up to the realities and seek creative solutions to secure the future of RE.

-The notion of a statutory curriculum for RE (whether local or national) will become meaningless in a fully academised world

-If the pragmatism of the Government’s policy means there is a failure of moral courage to address the legal mess, then we have to take control ourselves to drive change

-Bodies like the National Association of SACREs (NASACRE) need to get real and recognise the threat that SACREs may not survive beyond 2020. Hope for the best, plan for the worst!

-Recognise that pressing for a new legal settlement will fall on deaf ears; the Government will not budge. They might agree to tidy up the law and abolish SACREs and the agreed syllabus system – not too much of a political risk if SACREs have effectively disappeared anyway

-RE will only survive if it has educational credibility; statutory protection will be dead

-Schools and teachers will only bother if RE commands respect and provides straightforward guidance about what to teach

-At national level we need to stop ‘leaving space for local determination’ and get on with the job of developing high quality, albeit non-statutory national guidance (maybe with the support of the DfE)

-We use the Jack Reacher principle: Hope for the best (Gov’t action on a New Settlement) but plan for the worst (Gov’t inertia and abdication of responsibility).

The real challenge

Here’s the rub! How do we avoid fragmentation and marginalisation in a culture where statutory protection no longer has force or credibility?

Two solutions:

-Build up strong local and regional networks to support RE – NATRE’s local groups and Trust-funded regional networks point the way

-Develop an agreed national model of RE which commands respect of school leaders and teachers

But can it be done? In the words of a fellow blogger: “I think it would be excellent to have set knowledge that the students must leave knowing (a minimum expectation if you like) just like the other well-respected Humanities subjects” https://missseftonreligion.wordpress.com/

The good news is that we stop expending time and money producing multiple locally agreed syllabuses. There will be resistance from those who benefit from the current arrangements, but the demand for such syllabuses will finally die out if the academisation process reaches that crucial tipping point.

But that new model must set out clear, accessible, and straightforward content and, rather than repeat myself, I would go back to a previous blog with its core message: “there is one key reason for the conundrum of ‘good teachers teaching lacklustre RE’ ….. We have made RE too complicated!”

http://reonline.org.uk/blog/the-primary-conundrum/

Should RE stop its curriculum bed-blocking and open up some space for other crucial areas of literacy?

Two experiences have triggered this blog – first, listening to the excellent Linda Woodhead at the Wokefield 2015 Culham St Gabriel’s Conference Energising RE and, second, watching the recent film 99 Homes (highly recommended).

After Linda had spoken about her research into the changing patterns of religion in belief in the modern world, she developed some of the themes in her recent pamphlet A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools. http://faithdebates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/A-New-Settlement-for-Religion-and-Belief-in-schools.pdf

I have made no secret that I am a fan of the New Settlement ideas. But there are bits that could be improved. Some of the more challenging comments made at the Wokefield Conference were around the proposals for Key Stage 4. This is the tricky bit of text:

“On balance, and recognising the complexities, we think that when a more holistic change at Key Stage 4 of the National Curriculum is considered, there is a strong case for changing the requirement to study RE to a requirement to study religious, spiritual, moral, ethical, social, and cultural values. Such reform should better integrate RE and other elements of the curriculum such as PSHE, sex and relationship education, and education about values, and help ‘de-exceptionalise’ RE. This area of study would be different from and complementary to the GCSE in RE.” pg. 43

The idea is that RE should cease to be a statutory requirement at Key Stage 4, RS as a GCSE option should be strongly supported, but the curriculum space occupied by ‘core’ statutory RE for all should be revised to include wider elements such as PSHE, SRE, and values education.

I think this is not well conceived and misses a trick. Which takes me to 99 Homes. It’s a great film attacking failings in democracy and capitalism in contemporary America. It raises the blood pressure and triggered the rather obvious idea that all young people need to be equipped to understand and challenge the political, social and economic realities of the modern world. And our education system does not do well in securing this!

We worry about a lack of religious literacy but shouldn’t we, as teachers, also be really worried about a lack of political literacy, economic literacy and social literacy? Students are seriously disempowered if they are leaving schools unable to make sense of the structures of power, the mechanisms which drive the economy, and the dynamics of the society in which they live.

A very strong case can be made for a ‘new’ statutory subject at KS4 which would include opportunities for young people to explore the political, religious, economic and social dimensions of a range of global issues.

We have allowed the ‘RE space’ to be colonised by many of these themes: peace and conflict, crime and punishment, human rights and social justice. But this is to the detriment both of RE itself and the serious study of these important global issues. These topics need to incorporate the serious study of politics, economics and social science to give them edge and depth. Without engaging with those perspectives their study is in danger of being superficial and sentimental. Religious Studies GCSE needs to return to a more focused, serious study of the social reality of religion and belief in the modern world.

So what is needed to ‘replace’ or expand statutory RE is NOT a rather ill-defined PSHE/SRE/values curriculum, but something much more edgy and challenging focused on real global issues. RE needs to stop bed-blocking the Key Stage 4 curriculum and open up the space for the development of the neglected areas of political, economic, social, as well as religious, literacy.

The inspectors are in. They are focusing on the progress the school is making in developing assessment post-levels at Key Stage 3? They decide to interview some subject leaders. And it’s the turn of Dawn, the Head of RE. The conversation begins:

HMI: Good to meet you Dawn. As you know we’re taking a close look at your KS3 assessment. We are confident that arrangements at KS4 are secure. We know you use GCSE criteria effectively to assess students and set targets. And we know the school uses data well to track student progress. So tell me: how you have been developing your practice in RE at Key Stage 3?

Dawn: It’s been a challenge. We had been wedded to levelling and sub-levelling students but dropping levels has liberated our thinking about assessment.   We have a great SLT here and they listened carefully to the needs of each subject and didn’t impose a whole school model on us. SLT acknowledged that the data we submitted in the past was pretty hopeless as a way of monitoring the effectiveness of our work!

HMI: I like what I am hearing, tell me more your approach in RE.

Dawn: We did a lot of reading around about assessment and I think there were three things that have driven our thinking. First, we recognised the difficulty of defining progress in RE as a linear process. We always had grave doubts about the 8 levels and found sub-levelling a nightmare. It always seemed artificial and unreliable. Frankly, we doubted whether the data it generated had much credibility. Although SLT liked it when we submitted our data, I always suspected they looked at the figures with a raised eyebrow. We were determined not to start re-inventing new levels!

HMI: Still like what I hear; that makes perfect sense and I know that Ofsted’s own reports on RE have cast serious doubts on the use of levels in RE. What was your second reason?

Dawn: We had become really worried that our assessment practice was damaging our teaching and learning. We were distorting lessons by constantly referring to target levels. There was no real formative assessment going on. We wanted to restore opportunities to have meaningful conversations with students about the subject matter we are trying to study. We were determined not to start re-inventing levels again.

The third reason was about our own work as teachers – we were expending too much time and energy on the process of applying artificial levels to assessments rather than having real conversations with students about the ideas and insights in their work and how they might extend their thinking. We recognised that really great curriculum design is essential to effective assessment. We used some national guidance to help us re-think our curriculum design.

HMI: So what are you doing now?

Dawn: We focus our efforts on three things: making sure that we build real progression into the design of our curriculum; being really clear about what it would mean for different students to master the content of our curriculum; and, helping students understand what each topic is about and how they can get on top of the material they are going to study. What we now do is ask questions and set assessments designed that show students what they have learned and what they still need to work on, and identify ways to help them do this. No more mechanistic processes!

We spend a lot more time talking to students about the subject matter rather than their level. It helps us get to know our students. We know that ‘mastery’ means different things for different students and we are able to celebrate every student’s success. We also know when students are under-performing and need extra help or a kick up the backside! It’s not perfect, not when you teach 400 students a week, but it is so much better than the levelling nightmare of the past!

HMI: So what sort of data are you now providing to show student progress?

Dawn: There is no single imposed model in the school. SLT recognise there is no point in collecting ‘data’ that provides no meaningful information about genuine learning. At the end of each unit we can provide evidence about how well the students have mastered the content. We know which students have done well relative to their starting point and who needs to improve. We also know whether the topic has worked and if it needs to be improved next time. It was clear to all of us that Ofsted wasn’t looking for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model. And frankly it was recognised that Ofsted were unlikely to ask searching questions about data on pupil progress in RE. What matters is the student experience not the needs of the data monster. Our SLT have observed our practice and talked to the students. They know that students understand what the subject is about, what making progress means, how well they are doing and what they need to do to get better. We talk about these things all the time.

HMI: And you are right!

‘Nones’ – those that do not identify with any religion and who tick ‘none’ when asked to self-declare in any survey about religion. It’s a rather ugly term but one that is growing in importance in the contemporary landscape of religion and belief.

They make up around 25% of the British adult population, according to the 2011 Census. That’s more than Muslims, Catholics, and nearly as many as evangelicals according to the most recent Pew Religious Landscape Survey. The ‘nones’ are the fastest growing group of ‘believers’ in the UK.

Amongst 15-24 year-olds, ‘Nones’ represent 69% of the population according to the 2014 British Social Science survey.

In many ways ‘Nones’ represent a benchmark against which the legitimacy of RE has to be measured. Clearly we have a subject whose title seems to privilege an idea with which potentially the majority of 15-24 year olds do not identify!

This challenges the lingering confessionalism which still permeates much of RE. Take this recent quote from RE Today:

“One lingering appeal of religions in secularising times is that they offer some ideas about origins and destiny, seeking to map the incomprehensible territory of life to those who are ‘living it forwards’.”

If RE is to be genuinely impartial, it cannot privilege religion in this way. It needs to be balanced immediately with another sentence which would read, “One of the reasons for the continuing loss of influence of religion in the modern world is the sense that it no longer offers useful ideas about origins and destiny and provides no help in mapping the incomprehensible territory of life to those who are living it forwards.”

What do we make of the possibility that for nearly 70% of young people a secular response to questions of meaning is perfectly adequate? For them is there no ‘lingering appeal of religion’.

Who are the ‘nones’?

They defy easy definition. The term tells us more about what they are NOT rather than what they are. Can I take two people I knew well but are no longer with us. They were both strong, confident ‘nones’. How far they represented ‘nones in general’ I cannot tell.

For them religion played no significant part in their lives. The language of religion had no meaning for them and they did not refer to any religious authority when making decisions or thinking about their future. They had no lingering nostalgia for religion. For them meaning was found in the way most people find meaning – in their jobs, their family, art, music, cinema, politics etc.

If pressed they saw religion as a ‘childish thing’ to be put away, a pattern of superstition and illusion about a transcendent or metaphysical realm which meant nothing to them. They placed huge emphasis on an education that used reason and evidence to explore the world – but were deeply suspicious of ‘tradition’, ‘authority’, and ‘revelation’ as reasons for believing anything.

They would see no value in turning to religion for any wisdom or spiritual insight into human life. If religions did contain moral truths or nuggets of insight into the human condition, these would be in independent of the framework of religious ideas; they were simply reiterating what any reasonable human reflection would conclude.

They would suggest that there is little to be learnt ‘from religion’ – but much to be learnt from the study of religion!

They saw great value in the impartial investigation of religion for two reasons:

• Religions play a huge role in defining our heritiage. Learning about religion(s) is critical to any well-rounded cultural education. Art, literature, music, historical and political change, social structures etc. cannot be understood without a serious grasp of religious ideas, practices and institutions.
• Exploring religion throws important light on the nature of human life. The power and influence of religion reveal much about the human capacity for delusion and self-deception. It is important to try to make sense of the religious experience of humankind. So, while religion is of little use in ‘seeking to map the incomprehensible territory of life’; it is invaluable in terms of helping us understand human nature.

I am not sure how far these two people, my parents, represent the life of ‘Nones’ in general. What is clear is that any properly balanced, impartial, non-confessional RE must be inclusive of, and respectful towards, this somewhat amorphous and largely voiceless group. To reiterate, the ‘nones’ represent a benchmark against which the legitimacy of RE must be measured.

Any notion that religions “offer ideas about origins and destiny, seeking to map the incomprehensible territory of life” must be balanced throughout with a recognition that for many ‘Nones’ religions do not offer meaningful or useful insights into the human condition.

And as a contribution to this recognition this article offers a series of reflections from ‘nones’ about how they find meaning without recourse to religion.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/when-i-was-a-child-i-spake-as-a-child#.pnyPRGErx

This week’s announcement by the Vatican about reforms to the legal structures which deal with questions of marital nullity may seem to the outsider to be quite obscure. But they represent another phase in the reforming zeal of the current Pope and have triggered a variety of responses and debates on social media.
http://www.news.va/en/news/press-conference-details-marriage-law-reforms

It is also another interesting case study of the point I made in a recent blog on the GCSE debate:

The real value in looking at religious perspectives on ethical issues is the contribution it makes to an in-depth study of the religion itself …. NOT the contribution it makes to understanding the ethical issue. But that is just the thing that too much GCSE teaching fails to achieve. Too many pupils cannot contextualise the religious teachings within the religion itself.

What is intriguing about this discussion within the Catholic Church is not so much the perspective it throws on the philosophical, ethical and social issues surrounding divorce but the fascinating insights it provides into the theological, legal and political life of Catholicism.

To quote one valued member of our community:

“I cannot stress how significant this is. It may seem obscure to the outside world but there is a whole cadre of Catholics who cannot receive communion because they have divorced and remarried without an annulment. This leaves them adrift from the Sacraments unless they live celibate lives. This has been a scar on the lives of very very many and it is by the far the most radical step this Pope has made so far. You need to change your textbooks. This is revolutionary and opens up the possibility that we have only just started to see the extent of the change possible under the papacy.”

It is not easy to summarise the current debate but here are some of the threads:

• the proposed reforms do not touch the nature and purpose either of marriage, or of the Church’s marriage law
• for Catholics, marriage is a sacrament and is by its nature indissoluble; there is no change to the teaching on divorce which remains a barrier to re-marriage and taking Eucharist
• headlines about the Pope making divorce ‘easier’ are very misleading and do not understand the complex nature of Catholic teaching
• when a marriage is accused of nullity, the Church investigates to see whether the parties presumed to be married ever actually executed a valid marriage contract in the eyes of the Church
• debates within the Church focus around this notion of an ‘invalid marriage’; the idea that a marriage can be ‘nulled’ if it was flawed from the outset
• the current reforms relate to speeding up the process of determining a ‘nullity’ in order to reduce the suffering caused to those involved and make it easier to re-marry
• the changes are seen by many Catholics to reflect the reforming zeal of the current Pope
• lying in the background are concerns about authority within the Church and whether the proposals will trigger a counter attack to try to undermine the Pope with open rebellion by some clergy

The debate around ‘nullity’ raises all kinds of fascinating questions. How does the Church go about changing its thinking? We have seen all kinds of comment and reflection. This, for example, offers an interesting female perspective.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2015/09/09/as-a-catholic-i-welcome-the-changes-to-the-churchs-annulment-process/

But what is significant from the point of view of RE and GCSE is that the Church’s teaching is based on a set of beliefs, arguments and structures of authority which can seem at first sight to be quite alien to the outsider. It will be difficult for the non-Catholic to understand how the Catholic teaching can inform a wider philosophical or ethical debate about marriage and divorce. So, to paraphrase the quote above:

The value in looking at Catholic perspectives on marriage and divorce is the contribution it makes to an in-depth study of the Catholicism itself …. NOT the contribution it makes to understanding the ethical issue.

As Andy Lewis has usefully pointed out, “the unchanging Catholic Church may well be changing. However we need to be careful to cover the subtleties of these changes at GCSE level”.

The enquiries that are triggered by the debate seem to circle around these kinds of wider questions:

• How are decisions about theology, law and morality made within the Catholic Church?
• How is the Catholic Church responding to changes in modern society?
• What impact are those changes having on the theology, laws and institutional structures of the Church?
• How is the Church trying to interpret its teaching in the contemporary world?
• What do the issues tell us about the politics of the Catholic religion?

But frustratingly, these questions about the social reality of religion in the modern world are not embraced with sufficient seriousness by the revised GCSE courses. It will be for skilled teachers to develop opportunities for students, particularly those in non-Catholic schools, to engage with these kinds of question in ways that will bring authenticity and credibility to their learning.

The recent publication from Linda Woodhead and Charles Clarke, A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools (http://faithdebates.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/A-New-Settlement-for-Religion-and-Belief-in-schools.pdf), has sparked of a great deal of debate in the RE world – at least among online RE professionals where it has inspired numerous blogs and social media discussions. However, although clearly important, it is arguable that this report is simply part of a much wider movement for change in RE. It seems to me that the report is rooted in a very specific context, linked with a wide variety of educational, political and social factors, where an increasing number of people involved in RE are crying out for legal and structural change for their subject. I very much doubt this report could have been written ten or even five years ago and, if it had been, I suspect the RE world would not have engaged with it in the critically open way that it’s doing.

It is this current context that makes the potential of A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools, so powerful. There is a flurry of activity taking place at the moment as a variety of stakeholders engage in the negotiation of RE’s subject identity. For example, in early 2015 Culham St Gabriel’s held a series of thinking days aimed at discussing the future of the subject (and these are set to continue in 2015/2016); RE Today held a similarly styled workshop to brainstorm the place of research in the subject; the REC published the non-statutory National Curriculum Framework for RE and associated guidance from the Expert Advisory Group for RE; teachers are engaging in online debates and offline networking through local hubs and conferences; etc. etc. Without wanting to be too hyperbolic, this all makes for an electric and electrifying context. Thus, while a great deal of people may not agree with everything Woodhead and Clarke advocate for RE (or religion in schools in general), I suspect that many feel the same sense of dissatisfaction with the current system and an increasingly urgent feeling that RE must change if it is to survive in any kind of coherent form in the future.

How did we get here?

However, the question of how we got to this point is an important one, since knowing the path we’ve followed may help define the path we take in the future. Although this requires a much more detailed analysis and a much longer article to explore the nuances in sufficient depth, I would briefly argue that there a four main interrelated factors that may have brought the RE world to a stage where discussion about legal and structural subject change is a real possibility. These are:

Politics and Policy Changes

The destructive impact of Gove’s policy changes on RE in the first few years of the coalition government are well known and well documented. The bonfire of the quangos, the erosion of local authorities, the loss of many local advisors and the closure of some ITT providers has irrevocably changed the nature of the support networks available to RE teachers. It is arguable that this has led to the increasing number of grassroots hubs, teachmeets and networks that, with the help of NATRE and various trusts, have developed. Ultimately, this may prove to be a more vibrant form of CPD, linked to a flatter hierarchy of peer-to-peer sharing as opposed to the previous top down formal model of CPD, complete with gatekeepers and financial or even evangelical agendas.

At the same time the drive towards academisation and the creation of free schools has shaken the previously sacredly held assumptions about the statutory nature of RE and the right to withdraw. As the statutory nature of RE is only included in academies’ and free schools’ funding documents, for these schools it is no longer enshrined in primary legislation. This, along with wider issues around Ofsted and what should or shouldn’t be inspected, has brought the issue of statutory requirement to the fore and emphasised the question of whether having RE as a special case (part of the basic curriculum, a statutory subject, right of withdrawal etc.) is actually holding the subject back. Similarly, through policy changes that have increasingly placed power directly into the hand of schools, disempowering local authorities, questions about the role of SACREs and local determination are necessarily being discussed with renewed vigour.

These issues, combined with questions of subject identity, academic standing and the place of knowledge raised by the EBACC and knowledge oriented curriculum, have contributed to the current unstable context and a climate of challenge to the status quo.

The Importance of NATRE:

Very much linked with the policy changes experienced under the coalition government, and now continuing under the Conservative government, is the growing importance and voice of NATRE as an organisation. Although always clearly a vital part of the RE world, in the last 5 or so years the policy changes and particularly the threat of the EBACC appears to have catalysed NATRE into a much more political organisation than it was before. Through its campaigning work, networking and data generation through NATRE questionnaires the organisation has become better able to bring the grass roots voice of RE teachers to national debate and has developed its own direct links with policy makers. Furthermore, instead of being a single voice among the many member organisations of the RE Council (dominated by belief traditions and interest groups), NATRE has taken on much more of a partnership role, affording RE teachers a vital sense of ownership of the subject they teach at a national level.

Generational Change:

Inevitably as one generation of leaders in RE begins to take a step back, a new generation of leaders steps forward. With many of these leaders having had their entire educational experience (or most of it) in a post 1988 Education Act context it is perhaps unsurprising that their values and vision for their subject might differ from the previous generation and there should be a growing voice calling for change.

The Power of Social Media:

Finally, the huge growth in the number of RE teachers using online social spaces as opportunities to network with their peers has, at least to a certain extent, brought a sense of community to a group of professionals that would otherwise have been extremely isolated, particularly with the erosion of previous local authority based support structures. This sense of community has grown and taken on a national voice, linking educationalists and policy makers beyond the RE world through social media with online contexts providing space for active debate about the future of the subject. However, most importantly social media has enabled the voices of RE teachers on the ground to be heard and afforded them opportunities to participate in policy initiatives and activities that might previously have been reserved for educational consultants, SACRE members and members of belief traditions on the REC (all of whom may have been fairly well removed from the classroom). This has arguably had a destabilising effect on the power structures built up around the subject, disrupting previous networks and contributing to a context of change

In a sense all of these four aspects have worked and are working together to disrupt the status quo and create a context in which people can openly discuss change to the legal structures around RE and debate subject aims and identity in a critical way. The context is fluid and dynamic and, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, you can strike sparks anywhere.

When discussing what’s going on here, I think Foucault’s concept of episteme is conceptually useful. For Foucault, an episteme is a set of unconscious structures, rooted in a particular time and place, that define how people think about the world they are in. They unconsciously shape people’s assumptions and maintain and reproduce the status quo. I would argue that the RE world is now at a time of epistemic change. Old embedded thought structures about local determination, the place of SACREs and local authorities, the role of faith communities in the subject, the meaning of knowledge in RE, and subject aims and identity have all been disrupted and challenged. As such we are in a state of conceptual structural fluidity until a new epistemic thought structure becomes established around the subject. We are in the tiny temporal space between two epistemes; previous assumptions and associated conceptual structures have been smashed and it remains to be seen what new structures will emerge from the debris.

So What?

But so what, right? Does claiming that we’re at a time of structural epistemic change add much more than provide a language to use to think about the current context? Well, I would argue that this kind of analysis highlights the importance of what is currently happening in RE. Epistemic shifts are incredibly rare and being aware of a shift while things are still changing is an even rarer gift because there may still be opportunities to shape what is to come. As such understanding that we are in a fluid state places an imperative upon everyone involved in RE to step forward and actively participate in shaping the new thought structures that become established around the subject. Once these become established within the RE world there is the potential for real legal change. We should all therefore make the most of this rare state of fluidity and try and mould RE for the better before it’s too late.

Dr James Robson

Dr James Robson is the Knowledge and Online Manager at Culham St Gabriels and a lecturer at Oxford University Department of Education. His blog represents his personal opinions and does not reflect those of either of his employers.

An interesting article by John Gray published in last week’s BBC Magazine generated some lively debate in the RE social media. He asked the question: Does atheism have to be anti-religious?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34054057

His answer was that while some forms of modern atheism have a tendency to be evangelical in tone, there is a long history of more subtle and positive attitudes towards religion. The boundaries between atheism and religion have not always been as sharp and confrontational as they sometimes appear today. This is reflected in recent thinking such as Sarah Shortall’s notion of Belonging without Believing (SSRC publications) and Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists.

The use of the prefix ‘anti’ by Gray is perhaps unfortunate. ‘Anti-ness’ permeates the whole field of religion and belief and is not particular to atheism. Many Christians are anti-Muslim in the sense that they reject Islamic claims about the personhood of Muhammad and the divinity of the Quran. Many Jews are anti-Christian in that they reject the core beliefs of the incarnation of Christ. etc etc. Certainly many Muslims are anti-Hindu in their rejection of Hindu ways of representing the divine.

And I assume that for many in any religion, this ‘anti-ness’ would extend to the idea used in Gray’s book that these ‘false beliefs’ of other people’s religion are ‘an intellectual error without human value, that we’d be better without’!

The tendency to attack atheism and some forms of humanism for their strident, confrontational and evangelical tone, (yes Richard D, they have you in their sights),needs to be tempered with the recognition that religion also contains this strain of ‘anti-ness’.

What are the implications for RE in all this? Can I suggest three ideas – although there are many more?

1.In exploring any religion with older pupils do we need to investigate the way in which each religion makes sense of the existence of other religions? How do different Christians explain the existence of Islam for example? How do different Muslims make sense of Christianity? Clearly for many Muslims something went wrong with early Christianity in the way the figure of Jesus came to be interpreted. We need to avoid the bland notions of ‘All religions are equally true’ and get inside some of the complexity around the way religions understand each other.

2.The ‘anti-ness’debate often seems to assume a rather over-intellectual and cerebral approach to the idea of ‘being religious’. One of the key issues in this area is exploring the way different religious folk have different ideas about which ‘dimension’ of religion is the most important to them. Smart used his dimensions (doctrinal, experiential, social, ritual etc) to assist in the interpretation of religion. When we investigate the reality of religions and beliefs of real people it is intrigung to ask which of the dimensions is central to them. Where ‘doctrine/beliefs’ are given precedence that can often lead to anti-ness. “Our beliefs separate us from your beliefs”. Where the social, practical or ethical dimensions are central, the scope for valuing the faith of others is often much easier. For how many religious people does the notion of ‘belonging without believing’ apply I wonder? I am not sure we do enough in RE on the idea of different ways of ‘being religious’.

3.Instead of focusing on the anti-ness of atheists, can we focus instead on the contribution of the social and historical sciences to the interpretion and explanation of religion. Not enough attention is given in RE to these ‘ways of seeing’ religion. This blind spot reflects a kind of ‘hidden confessionalism’ that still characterises RE; a reluctance to recognise the interpretative power of secular perspectives on religion. It impoverishes our subject. My sadness is that this whole area of exploration has been ignored in the most recent review of GCSEs. Embarrassingly to find these perspectives you have to go to something like Unit 3 of the AQA Sociology A level with its focus on topics such as:

– The relationship between religious beliefs and social change and stability

– Religious organisations, including cults, sects, denominations, churches and New Age movements, and their relationship to religious and spiritual belief and practice

– The relationship between different social groups and religious/spiritual organisations and movements, beliefs and practices

– The significance of religion and religiosity in the contemporary world, including the nature and extent of secularisation in a global context.

http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/AQA-2190-W-TRB-SWU3.PDF

So let’s get beyond the crude ‘anti-ness’ of the atheist, and focus more deeply on the fascinating but complex diversity of ways in which it is possible to make sense of the changing nature of the social reality of religion and belief.