Structures and Policy: Doing it for Ourselves

The Commission on RE proposes that the subject change its name to Religion and Worldviews. Fine. Does the name matter? Plenty of schools already call the subject something else. What’s in a name? The subject could be called ‘Super Awesome Stuff’ but if nothing else changes, it will still describe a subject that is losing touch, losing relevance and its place in the curriculum.

Recommendation 1 calls for a change of name; however, things get interesting with Recommendation 2, which describes the real identity change; the upcycling of the RE curriculum to reveal cleaner lines, a single purpose for learning and a wider disciplinary framing of subject content.

Recommendation 10 acknowledges that even extensive development within the subject community will require wider support in policy, to enable parity of status and resource with other Humanities subjects. The Report states that ‘…evidence is clear that the exclusion of Religious Studies GCSE from the English Baccalaureate (Ebacc) has been extremely detrimental to RE in many Secondary schools..’ (59), hence parts a and b of Recommendation 10:

a. The DfE should consider the impact of school performance measures on the provision and quality of Religion and Worldviews, including the impact of excluding Religious Studies GCSE from the Ebacc and of excluding GCSE Short Courses from school performance measures.
b. In the light of the evidence, the DfE should make amendments to school performance measures to ensure that the study of Religion and Worldviews is not neglected or disadvantaged. (Recommendation 10, parts a and b)

The report details the ways RE’s exclusion from the Ebacc seems to be having a detrimental impact on the subject at Secondary phase, such as the allocation of less curriculum time than other GCSEs, a declining uptake of RE in favour of EBAcc subjects at GCSE, an increase of schools offering no RE at KS4, less value placed on the subject by parents and pupils, and subject specialists leaving schools and not being replaced.

Furthermore, evidence suggests a widespread non-compliance with the statutory requirement to provide Religious Education, partly enabled by Ofsted’s apparent lack of interest in enforcing this requirement. It was the statutory nature of the subject that justified its omission from the Ebacc originally, yet this is clearly no protection.

Therefore it seems essential to request support for a newly upcycled subject from wider systems, and for the DfE to be aware of the negative and unintended impact of its own policy. Damian Hinds’ response, about as negative as it could be without being an outright ‘no’, suggests in the short term at least the RE community can expect no support from policy. How much will RE’s upcycling depend on the wider support from policy and how much from within, as it looks as if we brothers and sisters will be doing it for ourselves?

Could it be that the subject has gradually been downgraded and overlooked because it is simply not as academically rigorous, or educationally valuable, as the other Humanities subjects? Could the decline in RE have started inside the subject, and external pressures which seem to cause its decline merely highlight it? Consider the third part of Recommendation 10:

c. The Russell Group universities should review the list of facilitating subjects and consider whether, given their stated comments on the academic rigour and value of Religious Studies A-level, it should be included.

The Report notes that in fact, while A’ Level RS is often accepted as a facilitating subject, it is not mentioned because A’ Level and GCSE RS are rarely entrance requirements for theology degrees. Is this in itself something the RE community would like to see changed? Would we prefer the study of RS at GCSE and A’ Level to be relevant to undergraduate study of theology?

The DfE’s unenthusiastic response to the Commission’s Report puts the RE community in a tricky position. How can we galvanize ourselves to upcycle RE, a laborious and unsure enterprise, with no guarantee of the status and resource we need to develop and thrive?

In fact change is already happening in the current system, in spite of the current system. RE teachers, academics and advisers are currently talking about multidisciplinary RE; a wider framing of familiar content to widen and deepen understanding. Other small but key mutations have occurred in the last decade, such as the removal of Attainment Target 2 from the most recent national guidance (RE Review) and the decision to focus on depth rather than breadth, even though it meant jettisoning or reducing some religions to be studied. All these changes have their detractors, but are the result of the RE community’s own conversations, in conjunction with what is going on in the world of education and the wider world. The Commission itself is an example of home-grown development.

The merit, and promise, of multidisciplinary RE seems to be that it allows conceptual frameworks to be built not just for pupils but for teachers as well. If teachers don’t have wider conceptual structures in their own heads to frame knowledge about religion and worldviews, how can they communicate it to pupils? It feels as if we are as a community questioning the detached and abstracted detail that has appeared in countless Agreed Syllabuses for the last two decades and asking questions like: why should pupils learn this? We as teachers want to understand religion and worldviews as categories, as phenomena with histories, diversity, dissent and variation, as forms of power, as subject to economic and political pressure, and so on. And then we want to help our pupils build up this knowledge.

The Commission Recommendations describe a new identify for RE that seems to come from the grassroots as well as current educational theory and the wider political context. We are a tight-knit, small and passionate community; surely no other subject community is quite like RE? Are we facing our last chance to earn a place in a 21st century education system? Some think so, some are more relaxed, some have got too much marking to do to worry about such questions. The Commission Report certainly seems to pin down various ideas that have gained ground in recent years: that the purpose of learning in RE should be clear, that religion is multidimensional and must be explored in multiple dimensions, that knowledge should be included in a curriculum if it contributes to an increasingly richer understanding, that we can gain insights from educational research. As a community we have identified the direction we want to go in without input from the DfE. We are a DIY community. We need to roll our sleeves and start building.