In 2011 Mark Chater offered a very provocative debate starter on the problems facing RE and the future of the subject.
Introduction
What’s worth fighting for in Religious Education? This event is part of the RE celebration month, with events taking place all over the country to promote the importance of Religious Education as a curriculum subject and to draw attention to the negative impact of the government’s present policies are having on RE.
Today is about a fightback for RE, but I shall also be shameless in provoking us to fresh thought about the kind of RE we want. This will not be the same RE as we’ve had. I hope to say enough to offend, or at least provoke, everyone here in equal measure.
When I began writing this presentation, several months ago, it seemed to me then that there were dozens of possible answers: things to fight for included a better share of the timetable, less teacher isolation, more money and time for ITT and CPD, a more workable system of support for RE locally and/or nationally, an end to the right of withdrawal, local determination, national curriculum status, a better public understanding of the subject … and so on, all these answers being things on which some or most RE people on the ground would agree.
The threats to RE
However, since then RE has been hit by a crisis so profound that we are now fighting for more: the continued existence of our subject, in the recognisable form in which it has evolved since 1944, is under threat. This threat takes seven forms:
-The drive toward deregulation and the cuts are combining to weaken the infrastructure that has supported RE locally and nationally; the system of Standing Advisory Councils on RE (SACREs), local advisers and national organisations that has held RE in place is now crumbling; the new Ofsted inspection framework will not make judgements about curriculum provision; the imposition of the English Baccalaureate (Ebac) excludes Religious Studies from being counted as a GCSE humanities subject, with the effect that many schools are dismantling their GCSE RS provision immediately and thus removing young people’s opportunity to take the qualification; this is the removal of the statutory stick and the replacing of one carrot by another. The response we have all received from the Department for Education (DfE) – that RE ‘is still statutory’ – is disingenuous, since they know that the Ebac is designed to change schools’ behaviour. It gives a nod and a wink to those schools that break the law and fail to provide a broad and balanced curriculum.
-The current curriculum review does not include RE (even though the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, promised in parliament that it would); yet that review, to be based on ‘a core of essential knowledge’, – in the age of the internet and in a time of massive global economic and ecological change, knowledge – I ask you – is so flawed, so arbitrary and philistine, that we might be better off out of the review than in; yet again, it is alarming that RE is outside any national definition of essential knowledge; instead, we have the cynical pitching of foundation subjects and RE outside the statutory tent, with opportunity for ‘showcasing’ days, expecting the subjects to fight with each other for a place inside: a social Darwinism of the curriculum, watching until some subjects, weakened by the fight, can be allowed to die;
-The current review of qualifications may abolish short courses, thus cutting off another highly successful route for young people to take Religious Studies;
-The love affair with free schools and academies, not as solutions to poverty and under-performance, but as a free pass for privileged ghettoes; it is predicted that half of all secondary schools could become academies (TES 2010) and reported that local authority advisory and support structures are collapsing (TES 2011b). This is not about parent power or teacher power: the private sector is licking its lips: Paul Pindar, Chief Executive of Capita, told the Financial Times that he is ‘eagerly anticipating the forthcoming age of austerity’ and expects ‘a greater degree of activity’ and ‘quick wins’ over the next five years (Scott 2011: 87). This will make the SACRE system, where it still exists, increasingly irrelevant;
-The lazy-minded and opportunistic reliance on an expanding faith sector: here we should make a distinction between the traditional providers of schools with a religious ethos, with their centuries-old experience in education, and the new faith sector, where RE will be in the hands of free school sponsors, financiers or ideologues or mega-selling journalists, whose muscle buys them a set of beliefs convenient to their class: privatised faith, laissez-faire economics, avoidance of difficult questions about authority, concentration on personal beliefs, and an offshore attitude to accountability that is causing concern in several European countries (SEHR 2011). In the London borough of Waltham Forest, ten free school applications have been submitted, of which seven come from religious groups that include the Emmanuel Christian Centre and the Noor Islam Trust (Mansell 2011).
-The assault on universities as places of initial teacher education, because they are beyond the direct reach of the DfE; an act of despotic vandalism that puts Theology, Religious Studies and related subjects under threat of non-viability, and could cause the supply of RE teachers to dry up.
-Perhaps most pungent of all, the rhetoric of freedom and localism, figleafing an unprecedented concentration of power at the centre: powers to control funding directly to schools, power over the content of teacher training, powers to determine the aims and content of the school curriculum, and to convert schools into academies without parental or governor consultation, (DfE 2010).
There is no evidence that the government has set out to destroy RE. If you examine their words, there are no statements from the DfE ministers that indicate any ill intent toward our subject. Yet, had they sat in a bunker and asked themselves, ‘how can we disable RE?’, they could not have come up with a better plan. Their deeds, and the probably unintended consequences of their deeds, are catastrophic for us.
The impact of the threats
Their actions are going to do much more damage than most of us are realising: not only destroying the infrastructure of SACREs, QCDA, universities and awarding bodies’ investment in RE; they also eroding everything we have gained: the statutory status of RE since 1870, the universal SACRE system since 1988, the strategy of aligning RE documents with national curriculum documents since 2000; not only that, the discourse of a curriculum built on ‘knowledge’ and ‘facts’ could change the culture and the language game of RE, perhaps beyond recognition and certainly for the worse. This is the perfect storm for RE.
When I think of what Mr Gove is doing, I am reminded of Naomi Klein’s work, The Shock Doctrine, on disaster capitalism (Klein 2007). Klein analyses the project of disaster capitalism as ideological shock and awe, a lesson to protesters or reasoned objectors alike: do not get in our way. She quotes Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics:
‘Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.’ (Klein 2007: 7)
First, have a perceived ‘crisis’: so we had the furore over standards as revealed in international surveys such as Pisa and Pirls[2], which the national regulator, Ofqual, says is ‘not that meaningful’ (TES 2011a). Yet it has been used to justify the retrospective imposition of Ebac league tables[3]. Next, offer the ‘solution’ from ‘ideas that are lying around’: the work of the core knowledge foundation, and the notion that the curriculum must be about traditional knowledge and economic competitiveness alone. By moving this fast, the Secretary of State is hoping that not enough people will spot the massive flaws and contradictions in his project. In this, too, he is following a template: shock doctrine tactics, according to Klein, teach that new administrations should move quickly, a variation on Machiavelli’s advice that ‘injuries should be inflicted all at once’ (ibid: 8). While not directed at RE, in a wider sense none of this is an accident: it is the shock doctrine applied to young people’s minds and careers; it is the disaster curriculum.
We are fighting now for the survival of RE in its present form: a uniquely English form, it might be said – muddled, untidy, compromised, lacking a strong intellectual base in pedagogical theory, yet clanking along in a more or less consensual way – but now, a coalition that claims to be conservative and liberal will neither conserve RE nor protect the democratic freedoms to allow the subject to flourish or evolve.
RE needs to change
But we have not come here simply to urge each other to fight for the same old RE: to conserve a model that is already being swept away. My belief is that even before the election, RE needed to change.
By way of illustration, two stories. Shortly after I joined QCA, a local authority contacted me because it was in trouble over its new agreed syllabus. The syllabus had been reviewed, revised with teacher involvement, new units, a good balance of religions and beliefs, quite strongly framework-consistent and highly regarded by its teachers. The ASC and the SACRE had recommended it for adoption. At the last thicket, there was an ambush: a conservative evangelical group on the Council objected that there was not enough Christianity in the syllabus. They stopped the adoption and called for a legal opinion on whether the syllabus was legal in terms of the 1988 Act’s requirements. This group was well equipped to carry out an effective ambush on framework-based RE: what they lacked in educational insight, they more than made up for in money and lawyers. I had several conversations with the very committed local adviser for RE, who was in a state of frustration and anxiety. There was very little practical support I could give, but I remember repeatedly saying: at all costs, don’t have a percentage of Christian content imposed on you as an interpretation of the law. If you do, this will create a precedent to bind you and also every other English local authority and SACRE. In the end, they settled out of court with a slightly adjusted syllabus. Another glorious English compromise.
Before we move on to the second story, I think there are things to be learnt from this one for the RE community as a whole.
Was this episode a once-off? Historically, I believe it was, but it could have happened at any time in the last 25 years, and with the growth of politically active religious fundamentalism, its likelihood has grown, not diminished. All these years, local determination has been living at the foot of a fundamentalist volcano. Those who argue that local determination has insulated us from inappropriate models of RE, and protected the pupils from indoctrination, are right only up to a point: they have forgotten that the unaccountable power interests of religious groups, and others interested in the privatisation of faith and morality, have plenty of other avenues into the classroom, and these will open wider with so-called free schools.
What sense does it make to speak of a ‘proportion’ of content being Christian or anything else? Arguments about proportions and percentages are based on a very traditional and outmoded notion of a syllabus as a list of content. People who take up the cudgels on this must have a notion that knowledge can be itemised, divided, aggregated, and categorised as correct or incorrect – a very Govean view of knowledge. They must also believe that the curriculum is a zero-sum game: that more of one religion means less of another. Christians are by no means the only culprits here. And I have received one piece of feedback pointing out that not all evangelical Christians would take this view or sabotage agreed syllabus in this way – a correction I am happy to accept. In the particular case, the group presumably believed that a certain percentage of Christianity in the syllabus is sufficient to preserve the nation’s Christian identity, or to save souls, or whatever, while a slightly lower percentage would fail to deliver the requisite social or spiritual outcome. Again, they are not the only religious group on SACREs that takes that view. This is what we might start referring to as the ‘ballcock and cistern’ theory of syllabus construction: when the volume of Christian content in the cistern reaches a certain level, the pedagogy ballcock creates enough pressure to enable the pupils’ minds to be flushed clean. In short: while the imposition of percentages of religious content would be extremely dangerous for RE and a retrograde step, it is also a meaningless discourse when looked at from the point of view of modern curriculum construction. A discourse can be meaningless and still do harm: just as a set of RE mechanisms can be ridiculous and powerless, and still do damage to the subject’s integrity.
The second story is more recent, from a secondary school with an Islamic affiliation. RE is mainly given by an Imam who teaches the pupils that their faith is God’s last word, that Jews and Hindus are in error and that homosexuality, civil partnerships and secular lifestyles are immoral. Pupils who fail to memorise portions of sacred text are subjected to violence. There have been some parental complaints and press exposure, but because this is an academically successful school, with parents competing to get their child in, the leadership is in a strong position and no one wants to confront them. Most complaints are stifled. The most recent recent inspection has failed to challenge or expose these abuses, and praised the school for outstanding spiritual and moral education and generally good relationships between staff and pupils. As with the previous story, I happily acknowledge that not all Islamic schools are like this, and that protests against this school came from within the Muslim community as well as outside.
One question arises.
How common is this? Could it be replicated, and is it on the increase? We do not know, but the conditions make it possible are on the increase: a weakening of intermediate accountability measures (dismissed as ‘bureaucracy’), an uncritical infatuation with the faith sector (part of the ‘big society’) and a bland assumption that pedagogy can be left to individual teachers (Gove 2011): these conditions are going to continue to increase, so we should not be surprised to find abuses of RE starting to grow up, like weeds in a neglected garden.
These two stories, for me, can be boiled down to one important and uncomfortable fact: even before the present ministers set out on their path of destruction, our model of RE, and our national mechanisms for managing the subject, were already flawed and in need of review. The present crisis has brought our weaknesses to the surface: it has not come entirely from nowhere: like a virus, the DfE policy has assaulted us at our weakest points – public understanding, strength of pedagogy, robustness and transparency of local structures – and made those underlying vulnerabilities life-threatening.
The RE community has choices and tasks
In the same way that some people see the sudden onset of a serious illness as a wake-up call, a chance to change their lifestyle and a reason to fight back, so perhaps we in the RE community will take this crisis as an opportunity.
Sometimes we in RE are afraid that, if we begin this discussion, it will never end, and we will unravel the essential alliance of organisations and viewpoints that supports RE. But, in this time of radical and senseless educational change, we must take the risk of beginning the discussion. It is the pedagogically proper thing to do. In some parts of the RE community it has already started, for example the agreed syllabus collaboration network began addressing the nature of attainment and progression in RE towards the second half of 2010; and the ‘Does RE work?’ project at the University of Glasgow is throwing some of our assumptions about impartiality and rigour into question (Lundie 2010). If we succeed in being clearer about our narrative, it will make us stronger.
‘Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.’ (Edmund Burke)
So: yes, we should continue fighting for a place in the E-Bacc, and continue fighting for the importance and statutoriness of RE in every local authority, every constituency, every school, every year group. We should ensure that our fight is positive, that our discourse does not suggest that we feel superior to other subjects. The traditional notion of a broad, balanced and coherent curriculum in this country is under attack and we can and should be standing with other subjects for that. We should hold the Education ministers accountable not only for their tactics but for their ideas, in the clear knowledge that they are treating the English education system and civil society as a laboratory for their ideas, and will try to pin the damage anywhere but on the ideas themselves. Ideas have consequences: and this is the year of consequences.
Now that national organisations are being swept away, we should be using technology as our main way of keeping in touch with each other to ensure that our messages and demands are consistent. We should be using Facebook and Linkedin, as well as National Association of RE Teachers (NATRE) networks, to make as much noise as possible.
This in turn will generate debate about RE itself, including intergenerational debate. We need a better public understanding of the importance of RE and this should not come from religious communities alone. It is good that leaders of churches and many other religious communities have spoken out about RE. We need their support. But we cannot rely on religious communities alone: this would be a fatal embrace, reinforcing the perception that RE is somehow not educationally legitimate. We should widen our base. Any parent and young family should recognise the need that children have to be able to ask and deal with challenging questions about life, to evaluate answers and to develop the attitudes we need in a diverse society. Does the name of our subject help ordinary parents to understand this? I suspect not, and I think the time will soon come when we need a debate about the brand name.
We have a year before the foundation subjects start to be written. We can use this year to reflect and regroup. We should take note that there are some interesting possibilities hinted at in the curriculum consultation questions.
We have a year in which to debate these issues and develop a document that could sit alongside the national documents. We can be captains of our own ship, but it should be one ship.
As the citadels of initial teacher education collapse, we should ask ourselves what kind of preparation makes a good RE teacher. Is a Theology or RS degree the best? My own Theology degree from an excellent University was full of matchless learning, but a very poor preparation for teaching and engaging young people. Even more so now in the age of technology, we need teachers with a knowledge of the discipline, not necessarily the detail; of how a discipline’s rules work, not necessarily how they are enforced in specific fields; of the grammar, not just the vocabulary, of our subject.
We need a review of SACREs: what they are called, what they do and how they are composed. We need to call them something else, and we need them for every subject: a system proposed by Robin Alexander in the Cambridge review as curriculum resource panels. SACREs should morph into curriculum resource panels for RE, drawing in a wider membership from universities, employers, parents and all relevant faith and belief communities without discrimination: all of them, or none. They should have responsibility for working with the subject’s national document: interpreting it and resourcing it for schools. They should not have responsibility for writing local syllabuses, for which in the digital, globalised age there is no need.
We should move towards a better understanding of the relationship between curriculum and pedagogy in RE: away from ballcock-and-cistern syllabuses, and towards a proper grasp of how curriculum design and pedagogical approach influence each other. For example, Mr Gove’s preferred curriculum design – facts – slants pedagogy in favour of the privileged because it says and does nothing about skills. We need to ask ourselves whether our favoured design – two attainment targets – works well enough for us, and whether syllabuses have become too complex to be used flexibly by teachers. We can steer a middle way here towards a distinctive ‘signature pedagogy’ for RE, one that gives us coherence and progression across the country. In doing this it is vital that we stay in dialogue with each other.
When we have done all this – fought alongside other subjects for the children’s right to a broad and balanced curriculum; used networking to call up a storm and a debate about RE; placed a significant marker in the national consultation on the curriculum; defined the pedagogical and curriculum perspective that our teachers need; made SACREs more equal and effective; established a better public understanding and support for our subject and what it does for young people and society – then we will be able to address one final problem: what to call ourselves. The name of our subject should change, as an indicator of how we ourselves have changed.
We have a choice. The perfect storm has hit us. We can either cling to the wreckage of the present model of RE – a course which I believe will leave us drifting and dying on the open seas; or pick our direction carefully and set sail for new directions, undaunted.
References
DfE (2010) The Importance of Teaching: White paper on education. London, HMSO.
Gove, M. (2011) BBC Radio 4 interview, Today programme, BBC, 20 January 2010.
Klein, N. (2007) The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Picador.
Lundie, D. (2010) ‘Does religious education work?’ RE Today, Autumn 2010, pp38-39.
Mansell, W. (2011) ‘Ten new schools in one borough?’ Education Guardian, 22 February 2011, pp 1-2.
Scott, M. (2011) ed. The Big Society Challenge. Cardiff: Keystone Development Trust Publications.
SEHR (2011) ‘Are faith-based organisations taking the place of the welfare state? A European study’. Social-economic and humanities research for policy, News alert service, No. 11. Bristol, University of the West of England, March 2011.
TES (2010) ‘Nearly half of secondary schools will consider academy status’. Times Educational Supplement, 17 September 2010, p12.
TES (2011a) ‘Ofqual says rankings from Pisa survey are not that meaningful’, Times Educational Supplement, 11 March 2011, p8.
TES (2011b) Union warnings as LA support role disappears amid job cuts’. Times Educational Supplement, 4 March 2011, p5.
TES (2011c) ‘Ministers’ plan for elite: forget GCSE and go straight to A level’. Times Educational Supplement, 18 March 2011, p1.
[1] Mark Chater was Adviser for Religious Education with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 2006-2010, and now works in the voluntary sector. This piece was delivered as an address at a Celebrating RE symposium in March 2010. It is written in a personal capacity and does not reflect the views of any organisation.
[2] The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) measured 15 year olds across 30 countries in 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009. (www.pisa.oecd.org) The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) measured 10 year olds across 40 countries in 2006. (http://timss.bc.edu/pirls2006)
[3] The Secretary of State, interviewed on 7 December 2010, said that the Pisa report ‘underlines the urgent need to reform our school system’. (www.education.gov.uk)
