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Over the last two terms I have been taking on the rather daunting task of re-writing a primary curriculum from Year 1 to Year 6. The aim of this new curriculum was to build something rigorous, knowledge-focused and exciting to not only prepare our students for secondary school, but to give them a good level of religious literacy for the rest of their lives. Although I am now a primary teacher, I trained, and until recently worked as, a secondary RE teacher.

One of the biggest shocks I have had in transferring to primary was a realisation of just how much KS1 and KS2 students are capable of. Never did I think I’d be able to cover Aquinas and Augustine with Year 4 or be able to properly consider Buddhist approaches to suffering with Year 6 or even to discuss the finer points of how prayers are answered with Year 1. This shock has given me the confidence needed to build a curriculum for our context that is ambitious in its content and hopefully this article will help you do the same. I’m going to introduce three key ways to help with that: reduce, reuse and recycle.

Reduce

It may seem counterintuitive but reducing how much you try to cover in your curriculum might be the key to making it rigorous. We spend all of KS1 just introducing the key concepts in Islam and Christianity. It lays the groundwork for an in-depth discussion of those two faiths in KS2 but also for introductions to other faiths with which they can draw comparisons. Similarly it is okay to reduce the amount of content you want to use in one lesson so you can work on just securing one concept or, perhaps even just taking the time to re-cap and re-embed material already taught.

Reuse

It is important then to be economical with the time we have to teach RE. By introducing key concepts early-on and re-capping them many times we are not only building a fluency in the subject but also saving time.

For example, I chose to introduce the idea of ‘faith’ very early on in Year 1 so that students understood the difference between observing a physical object and having belief in a deity. That concept then gets further embedded in Year 2 when we talk about the Bible and Qur’an and life of Muhammad, embedded even further in Year 3 talking about Judaism, Allah, and Christian prayer. By the time students get to Year 4 we can begin to test the concept out a bit more and create some fluency around it so we begin to talk about non-religious worldviews and how they view faith and then in Year 5 we talk about how faith can be tested by war so that in Year 6 we can even start to think about the ways in which faith is, or is not, always necessary in a religion.

Recycle

I, like every primary teacher I know, am a magpie when it comes to planning. We know how important effective explanations are to good teaching and, when it comes to planning RE for other teachers, we know that good pre-planned explanations can help cover gaps in subject knowledge. Therefore, when there is a tough concept I want to introduce, I reach for the stack of books by my desk and see how other writers have introduced this concept then I recycle it. I will think about how they explain things and adapt it for the age group and previous knowledge of those it will be taught to. You can find my recommendations for good subject knowledge boosters here.

What part does religion play in shaping the world? How is religion shaped back by the world, in turn? And now, in the Covid-19 world, are the answers different? The first two are essential Religion and Worldviews (R&W) questions, the third promises perspective shifts. The pandemic is changing us all, thus generating new R&W content. That much is clear from the London School of Economics (LSE) Religion and Global Society interdisciplinary blog, an excellent resource.[i]

The LSE blog is a changing collection of articles, often research summaries, as with Grace Davie’s and Nancy Ammerman’s piece on whether religion inhibits or generates social progress. [ii] Among Davie’s and Ammerman’s key findings are these (we recommend reading the entire article, and provide only some of the main points here):

• “Religion is a lived, situated and constantly changing reality, and has as much to do with navigating everyday life as it does with the supernatural.”
• Therefore, we have to look at contexts and examples, closely.
• (Researchers) . . . “will benefit from careful attention to the power of religious ideas to motivate, of religious practices to shape ways of life, of religious communities to mobilize and extend the reach of social changes, and of religious leaders and symbols to legitimate calls to action”

I would say that the advice for researchers is equally good advice for teachers. All of the points would apply whether or not we were under a pandemic, but the pandemic now gives a distinctive context and, in that context, particularised examples of religious motivation and mobilisation. The Covid-19 section of the LSE blog covers some such examples. [iii]

Firstly, Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek discuss religious and other gatherings in the age of coronavirus. [iv] Their analysis is provocative and unsettling:

• They argue that a religious gathering is more likely than a secular one to be identified as a virus cluster, as part of a discourse of suspicion against foreigners or minorities.
• They show how religiously-based defiance can often be typed as outrageous and irresponsible, as opposed to the less-than-perfect-citizenship of ‘secular’ gatherings such as a beach party.
• They see all of this as a clash between different understandings of reality, and a pretext for increasing state control of religious groups.

We might not agree with the views in this article; nevertheless, as we will see later, it offers useful classroom teaching points and resources. So does Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, who draws a fascinating account of this year’s Passover from her research in London’s Jewish communities: [v]

• She writes that “Next Year Together” may replace “Next Year in Jerusalem”, as the phrase of hope that concludes the celebration.
• She reports how for some Jews, social distancing goes against everything Judaism stands for and undermines their biggest strength: standing together as a community
• For a number of young Jewish families, she says, isolation has, however, created greater connection with their own nuclear family, bringing Jewish teachings and history to life in the comfort of their homes.
• It is still a difficult setting in which to celebrate liberation – you cannot celebrate with the extended family or invite strangers, as is customary. But projects such as Seder-to-Go provide all of the essential elements while spreading the message “Freedom is not limited to where you are.” [vi]
• 4,000 plus Seder boxes have been delivered across the UK, to many who are unable to source the necessary food for the holiday, or who need a step-by-step guide

Marina Sapritsky-Nahum concludes that in today’s global yet isolated world, traditions are not just handed down but also made. Recently I have heard two colleagues speaking about a natural role for R&W in offering young people a space to discuss the existential disruptions of the pandemic. I prefer Marina Sapritsky-Nahum’s focus, because whilst we should contribute to dealing with what is controversial or difficult, the responsibility to do so is not ours alone. Different curriculum areas have different contributions to make. Our distinctive contribution is to educate on the religion and worldviews aspects of Covid-19, as signposted by the articles summarised above, heeding the advice of Grace Davie and Nancy Ammerman to pay close attention to the specifics of context, example, motivation and mobilisation.

Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek provide a whole series of links to images and reports of different gatherings, religious and other. Teachers could use these with pupils, who could be tasked to identify and describe the different views of the world that these images and reports illustrate. Pupils could then be asked to juxtapose pairs of images that illustrate worldview differences, note the tensions that may result and suggest ways to manage these. How, for example, should a discussion proceed between the Louisiana pastor who hosted hundreds on Palm Sunday and the Anglican vicar who broadcast the Maundy Thursday service from her home? In a different learning task, pupils could consider the single images of empty places of worship. They could talk and write about why physical gatherings at sacred places are significant to people. Why do they think it is it important to join voices in shared speech and song, to physically take the Eucharist, or to adopt the prayer positions in synchrony with others? Opportunities for pupils to research now arise: what do members of different communities say about this? There are questions, too, about how societal developments challenge and reposition those communities’ self-understanding and practices.

Marina Sapritsky-Nahum’s stories provide excellent material for extending the enquiry. Teachers could present these to pupils, then providing a summary handout for annotation: when Passover took place under lockdown, what was lost, and what was gained? Feedback from the task could build into wider discussion: what do the gains experienced during Passover under lockdown tell us about how all communities can become stronger in the future?

[i] The blog’s home page is https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/about/

[ii] Grace Davie and Nancy Ammerman, ‘A lived, situated and constantly changing reality’: Why religion is relevant to the pursuit of social progress,’ online article available at
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2019/01/a-lived-situated-and-constantly-changing-reality-why-religion-is-relevant-to-the-pursuit-of-social-progress/ downloaded on 11 May 2020.

[iii] The section is at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/category/covid-19/ and has twelve widely varied case studies at the time of writing. Again, I have space for only a couple here.

[iv] Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek, ‘Contagious Crowds: Religious Gatherings in the Age of Coronavirus,’ online article available at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2020/05/contagious-crowds-religious-gatherings-in-the-age-of-coronavirus/ downloaded on 19 May 2020.

[v] Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, ‘ ‘This Night is Different From All Others’: Passover in London and Celebrating Liberation in Isolation,’ online article available at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2020/04/this-night-is-different-from-all-others-passover-in-london-and-celebrating-liberation-in-isolation/ downloaded on 19 May 2020. The article also gives a general introduction to Passover.

[vi] See https://www.thejc.com/community/community-news/deliveroo-to-deliver-chabad-coronavirus-seder-to-go-kits-to-the-isolated-1.498818 .

Working in a Church of England High School affords me the luxury of RE being a core subject and is therefore held with high esteem. SLT, governors, students and parents see the value in what we do and what we are trying to achieve with our young people. GCSE is compulsory and our results are slightly above national average.  Everything was going swimmingly…………. until the 18th March 2020 when the announcement was made that schools would be closing their doors to the majority of students. From the following Monday we would enter an unknown world of virtual teaching. But that’s fine!  We can all use computers, can’t we?  We can all carry on with our schemes of work and tweak them for home learning, can’t we?  My expectations were high.  I know my students and I know what they are capable of. The work was set and the days until ‘hand in’ were counting down.

Then came the reality. The students were clearly taking time to adjust to home learning.  A different way of learning, reading instructions via an online platform, guiding themselves through carefully constructed resources, downloading attachments that has challenged us, but without their teacher in the same room for reassurance.

I am immensely proud of my students and how hard they work. So, when the work that appeared in my inbox varied in quality, I had to remain reflective and ask questions of myself and my team as to why this might be the case. Well, the usual high standard of work was caught up in the minds of confused, scared and unsettled young people who were trying to find their feet in a world that had been turned upside down!

Laptops on knees, dining room tables, desks in bedrooms, living room side tables. Some working during school hours and others not until they can get a slot on the shared computer at home or after their younger siblings have gone to bed because they have been helping to care for them. The circumstances that our students are working in are so varied and, in some cases, complex. We needed to factor that in.

So, a rapid change in mind set from me and let’s see what happens. Gone are the requirements to complete every section of the PowerPoint that has been set and ‘proof’ being sent to me and welcome to quick wins. The PowerPoint is still shared and a hope that students will find the time to work through it. A differentiated approach works better, with extensions there for the more able and more scaffolded tasks for lower ability groups. Online spelling tests, quizzes and reflections on their current experience are a win.   Something changed overnight. Notification after notification!! The work was actually flooding in after all.  The online self-marking tasks also hinted to me about who had really engaged with the lesson and who had maybe gone straight for the quiz. But I can now record that and make sure that I cover those areas that seem to have received lower scores when we return to school.

I may have adapted my expectations during home learning but, in doing so, student participation has drastically increased. They are engaging much more readily and are doing more than required of them too.  In addition to the spelling test or quiz or whatever is it, they are also sending me pictures of their work that they are proud of………and I’m proud too!

Lockdown is tough, but so are we!

If anyone had told me that remote teaching would be this hard – I would never have believed them. What’s there to worry about? No time wasted travelling to and from school, far less marking, one or two Zoom calls a day as well as a daily a message to my class… A breeze! Or so I thought.

Well here I am, in my third month of lockdown and time has a different tale to tell. The ‘new normal’ has been exhausting! Having to get used to a totally new way of doing everything has been way more tiring than I thought it could be. Yes, there was a potential to have a bit more sleep – no daily 6 a.m. alarm to worry about. However, I didn’t expect to be affected by the Covid-19 news the way I have been. Sleepless nights and a fuelled anxiety have meant that I haven’t rested well at all. I constantly worry about everything and everyone around me- with elderly parents who can’t get out, to vulnerable friends and neighbours and of course, my own children.

Zoom meetings have become part of my ‘new normal’. I have learnt all the techniques and tricks to successful online meetings: I am sure this will be the way forward for so many as we come out of lockdown. It’s all been great as long as the technology hasn’t failed, or that I haven’t forgotten to set an alarm for my meetings. I have absolutely loved seeing my pupils on Zoom calls – I didn’t think I would miss them as much as I did. Just hearing about what new skills they’ve picked up or the fact that they had mastered life skills such as cooking and D.I.Y, was fabulous – this is something that I would never had known about otherwise.

Never did I think planning and putting together remote learning packs would take as long as it has. I have been meticulous in sourcing/making the right tasks with the right amount of challenge for my pupils. Not being able to teach them new concepts has made me feel as if I have let my pupils down, but it couldn’t be done. Not knowing how much support my pupils were getting at home meant that I was ‘in the dark’ about how much work they were actually doing or even if they were being supported by their parents, who had their own work to do.

Having the joys of no SATs this year (I am a year 6 teacher), should have offered a welcome reprieve but it didn’t. I didn’t realise that some pupils would actually get so upset over having no tests! Tests aren’t for everyone, we know that, but they are a form of summative assessment that many teachers rely on for data. We are now left thinking “Do we actually need that data?” especially now that teachers all over the country have had to fall back on their own assessments of pupils’ progress.

Being a RE subject lead, I have made sure that we as a school sent home sound RE activities. This has been a particularly good time to use the NATRE Spirited Arts competition to send home, giving our pupils a highly relevant and creative task to enjoy completing. Through contact with my pupils via Zoom calls, I know that many of them have thoroughly enjoyed having the time at home to sit and reflect on life, in order to write about their compositions and more importantly, they have enjoyed involving their parents in this process, which I feel is an ideal opportunity to give their parents a clearer understanding about what RE is like in schools today. I have found the home learning tasks provided by NATRE as well as RE:ONLINE to be lifesavers!

The breakdown of lesson content on the RE:ONLINE website has been extremely useful: I have loved the useful headings of activity, knowledge, lesson planning, starter and assessment to help guide me in my planning. I managed to continue teaching about Buddhism (as I had started this unit with my year 6 pupils before the lockdown began) thanks to RE:ONLINE. I was able to easily source a website giving my pupils information about Buddhist beliefs and use the suggested activities from the RE:ONLINE website to give my pupils. Being able to do this has been instrumental in easing my workload. I know that the lesson content I have given my pupils is of sound quality and I know that they will really enjoy the tasks which have been set for them.

I have really enjoyed finding links showing how religious worship has changed all over the world and using these to form the basis of new lessons. An example has been sharing current images of Mecca with my year 5 pupils, teaching about how worship has been forced to change, especially relevant during the month of Ramadan. This is turn raised questions with pupils about the importance of having a place to worship and what difference not being able to visit a mosque, church, synagogue or any other building would make to a person of faith. I have learnt that pupils have enjoyed discussing these ‘Big questions’ with their parents at home and that the classroom is not the only place where a debate can happen!

Moving forwards, I do believe that the way we teach and plan units of work from now on, will change for the better as we have learnt to think from a different perspective. I certainly know that the staff in my school have all been signposted to where to find certain resources and will now have a bank of where to access super quality lesson ideas and resources.

The lockdown has taught me one thing: that I am a dedicated teacher who loves teaching. This is what I was always meant to do! Teachers are highly resilient and they find a way of making things work. Whenever the wifi played up or my school’s remote server broke down, I sought to use the time I had doing something productive. The amount of amazing cpd opportunities available for free has been countless – for this, I will always be so grateful! The RE:ONLINE website has offered a plethora of resources and learning opportunities that I have shared with teachers in my school. NATRE and RE Today have offered excellent webinars at cheaper rates – an opportunity I couldn’t resist: such a great way to provide cpd for all staff. This has been one of the many advantages of the lock-down – a time that I will never forget!

When we do go back to school in some shape or form, I do know that I will never take anything for granted and I will cherish every moment with my pupils and my colleagues.

It can be a daunting space: this symbol is associated with what religion, this mantra belongs to whom and ‘celebrating’ in school without being disingenuous. Welcome to Primary Religious Education.

The love for diversity and communication between people is what has driven me for a long time. From personal experiences to the places we hold in society, I find it hard to shelve the subject of RE as a standalone concept. From children to adults, the notion of identity and religion is a fluid concept. It not only swims from one side of the spectrum to another, but also deviates from the stereotypes society may have. I suppose that is why it may overawe primary practitioners in their delivery of the subject.

Let us take our best assets: our pupils, our want to teach and share knowledge, and most importantly, the want for relationships. Religions seek for relationships: be it between creators and their servers, festivals and even places of worship are there to bring people together. The classroom has brought us together, and literacy leads to self-reliance and curiosity. So why can’t that be the footing of your RE lessons?

Religious literacy should aid in the delivery of your lessons, no matter the topic or question at hand. It stems from the importance of oracy. For a child to be able to vocalise their thought process, whether with visual prompts, or key words, in order to better communicate. Religious literacy strives for better communication between peers in a classroom, and also between teachers.

One of the principles of religious teaching is that religions are internally diverse. That’s a biggie: navigate slightly away from singing praises of us all being the same with different names. Yes, it can be a topic of discussion (my religion says this, that’s similar to that), however, while these ‘major religion’ labels have their uses, it is important to understand that identification as a Hindu or Muslim (or any other religion) conceals an incredible diversity of beliefs and behaviours. This is where the literacy takes place.

More so, your classroom is its own culture of (little) human behaviour, with a set of rules, beliefs and disagreements. From early theological thought in year 3, to deeper questioning by year 6. Religious literacy encompasses all aspects of human culture and behaviour in one. What it will also bring to the forefront, and it’s peeked its head into many a lesson of mine, are that religions are dynamic and changing. Concrete they are not. Why? Human practice and behaviour.
For example, by emphasising principles, you can start to engage in the rudimentary recall of facts of a religion or world view, in the hope to lead a more innovative way of communicating with people for whom religion is an integral aspect of their lives, and others where it is not. Knowing that someone has religious beliefs or practices can then be the start of an open-ended conversation, rather than an invitation to make assumptions – either positive or negative. Allowing the asking of questions, and creating an environment where judgment is suspended is key. Challenging unfounded claims others make about a ‘cultural other’ that sound unfair is also a good way to redirect the conversation and help others evaluate their own worldview to prevent the problem from perpetuating.

It sounds fiddly, with curious minds who pose another question in response to the question, but perspective broadening starts with the teachers, the assistants and the children in a whole school setting.

Religious literacy doesn’t and shouldn’t stop at the school gates.

We are lucky to have good provision at key stage 4 for those students that don’t opt for GCSE. We see them once a fortnight for 1 hour and we mainly have RE specialists teaching it. It’s called REality.

Up until recently our course has been mainly moral and ethical issues per half term, some which link to the GCSE and some don’t. To avoid repetition of work of the GCSE students we have tried to take slightly different angles on the topics in our core RE. For example, when looking at abortion we look at many more ‘real life’ case studies and look at examples of ‘forced abortion’ and the issue of who should decide about if a woman should be allowed to either have or not have a baby.

However, in the past year we have been reviewing our provision to try and plan for more challenge, progression and balance across the disciplines. Our key stage 3 (year 7&8) is purely theology and religious studies so we wanted to balance out the disciplines at key stage 4. So, we completed the Church of England audit resource (https://dioceseofyork.org.uk/uploads/attachment/4000/self-evaluation-audit-secondary-sept-18.pdf) and saw that we were doing less philosophy with students as we could be.  The moral and ethical issues were using a lot of social science and some of the philosophical ‘big questions’ in life but not much from the influential philosophers and their arguments. So, we now have a ‘Philosophy 1’ & ‘Philosophy 2’ unit in year 9 & 10 that build on each other, which is helping us to develop our subject knowledge as we’re teaching things we’ve not taught before.

We also looked up to the A level specifications to look for content that could be included in our topics to challenge students. We found that theories such as Utilitarianism could be taught simply and importantly repeated across topics, so students have the repetition of content to help them remember and understand it across topics.

Finally, to give each unit a clear focus, we are developing a clear, curricular enquiry question for students to answer at the end of the topic. Whilst these won’t be ‘in-depth’ due to the time restraints, they will allow students to pull together the beliefs and theories to answer them. For example, “Is it our right to decide what happens to our body?” for our medical ethics topic. We don’t have to complete formal assessments for REality but this does give students a sense of purpose over the topic as we can reference back to it over the 2-4 lessons and they can see how each lesson contributes to their response to the enquiry question. To keep things focussed for students we don’t use books, but we use A3, double sided sheets which have a pre-designed framework for their keywords, notes, questions and finally the enquiry question. This means that we spend less time on presentation and copying key information and more on discussion, case studies and application of the beliefs, teachings and theories. This also significantly reduces our mark load as we mainly are checking they’ve completed the correct boxes for the lesson.

Overall, we feel that these developments are encouraging the students to continue to take REality seriously as we are challenging their thinking and giving it a clear structure and focus.

Reflecting on teaching and leading RE during the lockdown period has made me realise there have been some challenges, but also some surprising advantages.

We have been teaching all of our classes the normal curriculum predominantly through a combination of audio power points (delivered via google classroom) and live zoom lessons. These have caused some challenges. For example, I had to quickly learn how to use these apps and to find time to write numerous power points and source suitable clips. I have also made many, many mistakes. Such as forgetting to turn the microphone on when I was recording! However, there have been advantages. In particular, creating the audio power points have enabled me to deepen and consolidate my understanding of a unit and how this links to other curriculum areas. As well as introduce some new ideas sparked from my attendance at Strictly RE earlier in the year. In addition, as the students have found these audio power points to be so useful, I plan to write more of these and utilise them to better support flipped learning and to aid those revising for an examination or to catch up due to absence.

Deciding how to teach the year 11 and year 13 has also been a challenge. We made the decision to provide lessons which enable students to make the transition to the A level or a university degree respectively. However, although this was time consuming, as there were no previous materials to draw on, it too has been advantageous and even enjoyable. Firstly, it has enabled me to further my engagement with various academics in order to identify beneficial topics for pupils to explore and to discuss the suitability of materials they already provide (I am lucky in this respect as, due to my role on NATRE, I already work with various scholars). This has led to fruitful, ongoing dialogues, concerning how these materials could be adapted and developed to better support school pupils; something that will be continue to be useful for all in the future I hope. Secondly, this also drew my attention to various free webinars being provided for teachers. Thus, I have been attending, virtually, webinars (which include those given by ResearchED and James Holt/TRS at Chester University) that have enabled me to deepen and reflect on my subject knowledge, pedagogy and teaching practice. Such engagement has already been beneficial as it has led to adaptions being made to the curriculum and in the resources used to support pupil learning; something I hope will also continue over the summer term.

Therefore, although there have been many challenges (not all mentioned here), there have also been benefits both in terms of my own practice and in the experience I have provided for the pupils, as I try to do the best I can to deliver my lessons in this ‘new normal’.

It was a year ago today that I started in the role of Chief CEO at Culham St Gabriel’s. It’s been an amazing year. It’s been great to work with so many talented people and organisations which are passionate about education in religion and worldviews. In the last couple of weeks, it’s been fantastic to see over 1000 teachers sign up to our self-study courses. I’m also really thrilled about new virtual seminars and events coming up this term in partnership with all the main RE organisations.As today marks my first anniversary, it also seemed a good opportunity to share with you some of our plans for the future. The Trustees, staff and consultants have worked hard over the last few months to shape a new vision, mission and strategy for the Trust. We have also reflected on our values and ways of working.

Our new vision is for a broad based, critical and reflective education in religion and worldviews contributing to a well-informed, respectful and open society. We are deliberately using the language of religion and worldviews supporting the vision of the Commission on RE (2018) and look forward to the shaping of this newly defined subject over the coming year. There is much work going on around this at the moment, including a number of publications already in the public domain or soon to be published. In addition, we have emphasised, that high-quality religion and worldviews is not an end in itself but contributes to the transformation of society. This is really important for us as a charity. Above all, we exist to make a difference.

So, we have a big vision! It has therefore been important to consider what the Trust’s unique contribution to this vision is, our specific mission. We have identified six strands to this, and they are:

• Increasing public understanding of religion and worldviews education
• Engaging with, informing and influencing decision makers
• Creating well-informed, empowered and influential educationalists
• Establishing and building strategic and collaborative partnerships and networks
• Commissioning and publishing focused and accessible research
• Championing and developing inspired and well-resourced teaching and learning

You will see that we are shifting our focus to work not only with the immediate world of RE professionals but also to engage with the public, with policy makers, and other influencers. We are really excited about the new emphasis in our mission and look forward to conversations with many of you about how we can work together towards fulfilling it.

So how will we do this? This is about the ways we work and the values that underpin all we do. In talking with colleagues, two of the most important words that came through were collaboration and connectivity. We aim for positive relationships with an emphasis on partnership and networking. We have also been moving towards being more open and transparent.

Listening to others, valuing diversity and sharing our work. Having integrity in all we do is vital.  We strive to be honest, authentic, dependable and trustworthy in the way we work. Above all we are about serving and empowering others. We endeavour to be responsive, generous and available to everyone. We aim to facilitate others to grow in confidence, be creative and bring about change. As an endowed foundation, being good stewards is paramount. We are committed to ensuring a good return on our investments and to use time and resources effectively. Over the coming months we will be making these values more explicit in our communications and they will shape the ways we work now and in the future.

I hope you have captured some of my enthusiasm and excitement for where the Trust is going next. We are really delighted by our new vision, mission and distinct values. We look forward to partnering with you in working towards our vision and putting our mission into action.

In my next blog/vlog I will share more about our specific strategic objectives for the next three years and how we plan to put these into action.

‘How I..’ feels misleading for the title of this blog post. When it comes to developing schemes of work in my department it is very much ‘how we…’. Taking a collaborative approach to developing our KS3 curriculum is important to ensure that all of us are invested in it and share the same vision.

The first thing we discuss when wishing to introduce a new scheme of work is ‘what knowledge do we want students to know by the end of their time in school?’ The National Curriculum states that we should ‘introduce pupils to the best that has been thought and said’. In RE, this could encompass a huge amount: allowing students to encounter the ideas of the Greek philosophers, engage with religious texts, debate ultimate questions about meaning and purpose, discover contributions that have shaped our response to ethical issues in society today. The list goes on. This appears wildly ambitious. The first question you might ask is ‘How can I fit it all in?’ Unfortunately, we can’t. Being selective is difficult but consider what concepts it is that you wish your students to learn that will enable them to succeed later on at GCSE and A Level. A couple of years ago I shockingly discovered, on introducing A Level at my school, that although students had achieved 9’s at GCSE, they did not know how to look up a Bible verse because I had always provided the texts for them. I knew this was something I had to rectify immediately and embed earlier on in the curriculum.

The second question may be ‘Well surely I can’t possibly teach Descartes’ philosophy to Year 7 or explore how the Great Schism changed the face of Christianity forever in Year 8?’ Actually, this is exactly what I am suggesting – all students deserve access to such groundbreaking and influential ideas, however complex they may be. We shouldn’t assume that our students would not be able to ‘do it’ and therefore, we won’t teach it. I actually find that students enjoy learning the most when they are challenged. The feeling of finally understanding something is much more rewarding when they have had to struggle to get there.

In our Year 7 Introduction to Philosophy unit we explore Descartes’ infamous cogito ergo sum (usually translated into English as “I think, therefore I am”). We begin by asking students ‘what they know for certain to be true? How do they know?’ which leads onto a class discussion about empiricism. We then use a clip from the film ‘Inception’ to reinforce the idea; the main character Cobb cannot know whether he was dreaming throughout (spoiler alert!) because dreams feel so real when we are in them. This gives students enough background knowledge to look at Part 1, Article 7 of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy. We use the original text and students are asked to infer whatever they can from it. Support comes with the live questioning and unpacking of the text together that follows. In our Year 8 History of Christianity unit students summarise each event studied on their own timeline throughout the lessons so they can put them in context and analyze their impact. The ‘Knowing Religion – Christianity’ textbook and the Truetube ‘Church History in Ten Minutes’ video have been useful resources. Most students can relate to the arguments that led to the Great Schism when they think about the disagreements that they have with family or within school, despite shared values.

Finally, context is equally as important as content. Mary Myatt stresses the importance of ensuring that students understand the bigger picture. This is crucial for when students apply knowledge to new topics throughout the curriculum. Our Year 8 curriculum is centred around the theme of morality and rights. Students begin by studying ideas of right and wrong including different responses to ethical dilemmas e.g. the trolley problem (a thought experiment where a decision has to made to save the lives of 5 people by killing 1 or do nothing and allow the 5 to die). We then move on to looking at how religion has both been a force for equality and discrimination throughout history before enquiring how Jews can still believe in an all loving, all powerful God after the Holocaust? Finally, we examine why Muslims face prejudice today and how we need to learn from the mistakes of the past in how they are treated. Each of our lessons starts with a retrieval quiz where we ask students recall questions from ‘last lesson…’, ‘last term…’ and ‘last year…’. This allows us to make explicit links with knowledge from previous topics that we will be building on in that lesson.

Due to the new Ofsted framework the words ‘intent, implementation and impact’ may now strike fear into teachers, however, considering these has very much allowed our department to review what we want out of our curriculum and to engage afresh with the subject we love.

In September 2017, I started what I could only describe as my dream job. A supportive, local secondary modern school appointed me as Subject Leader of RS. I was to teach from KS3 to A Level. I couldn’t be more excited to get started.

One thing, however, troubled me. In a larger than average school, I taught only twenty students in Year 11. The Year 10 cohort numbered twenty-seven. Whilst this made for an easy marking load, it didn’t bode well for the survival of the subject as a GCSE option and put our A Level numbers in jeopardy. Something had to be done at Key Stage 3 in order to boost the numbers.

The most obvious place to start was with the Year 9 course – my priority was to ‘sell’ the subject as a challenging, respected GCSE option, and one that would prepare students for life in modern Britain. In line with the SACRE Agreed Syllabus, I kept the first half of the year focusing on Sikhism but introduced a Philosophy module for the latter half. Broadly inspired by the ‘Existence of God’ theme from the OCR GCSE, this module introduces topics such as evil and suffering, arguments for the existence of God and religious experience. I was also keen to bring in a lot of discussion and evaluation – so P4C techniques and Socratic Circle discussions feature heavily.

However, I knew it wouldn’t be enough just to re-write Year 9. In order to promote sustainable growth and genuinely attract students to the subject (as opposed to them choosing it to fill a spot on their timetables), Year 7 and 8 needed well-resourced, challenging and interesting lessons. A further challenge was posed by the large number of non-subject specialists teaching RS across the two years – I needed to ensure that they felt confident and supported in delivering lessons which stretched and enthused the students.

I had inherited a handful of schemes of work and a few resources which didn’t have the depth that I felt was needed. I decided to re-start from the Agreed Syllabus. We decided to keep Years 7 and 8 to comparative religion, exploring Christianity and Buddhism in Year 7, allowing students to build on their work from KS2, and Islam and Judaism in Year 8. This meant that students could draw comparisons between Islam and Judaism and see the overlaps – important in promoting the British Values of individual liberty and respect of those with different faiths. We introduced a further module at the end of Year 7 called ‘Big Questions’, which boosted listening and debate skills through exploring the nature of humanity and morals from Buddhist, Humanist and Christian perspectives. I was keen to promote student-led working and independence, as well as keeping lessons fairly fast paced, so we have lots of ‘chunked’ activities and mini-plenaries throughout to assess understanding. Lastly, I wanted to emphasise the academic value of RS in terms of developing written skills, so we have embedded evaluation questions in order to develop empathy and appreciation of different views.

To say that I have been pleased with the results of the re-development would be an understatement. From a cohort of twenty, now over sixty students have chosen RS as one of their GCSE options to start next year, tripling our numbers in three years. From three in our current Year 13 class, we are set to have 15 A Level students start in September. I haven’t declared the RS lessons ‘finished’ yet – I’m exploring a re-design of KS3 to introduce a more thematic based approach, however it is clear that students value the challenge and depth of study that our subject can offer.