To receive a verbal report on behalf of the Director of Children’s Services on significant national RE matters and consider the implications for Hampshire children.
Minutes:
SACRE received a verbal report from Patricia Hannam, the County Inspector/Advisor, on behalf of the Director of Children’s Services on key national RE matters.
Members were informed of the NASACRE Conference on 23 May in Birmingham and were invited to express an interest in attending. The three key speakers would be Richard Kueh, Ofsted Lead Inspector for RE, David Hampshire former NASACRE Chair, and Ed Pawson, Vice-Chair of the REC.
Termly newsletters are published by NASACRE which Members were encouraged to read. NASACRE training webinars were also available for all members; details of these were sent out to Members by the clerk. It was proposed and agreed that next year SACRE would pay the annual fee for these training webinars as it would be more cost effective.
The South-West SACRE’s Conference on 28 February 2022 was attended by three members, Chris Robinson, Elizabeth Jenkerson and Sushma Sahajpal.
Chris Robinson spoke about the keynote speech given by Stephen Pett, a national RE adviser with RE Today. He spoke about the framework project he was involved with to produce a follow on from the 2018 Commission of RE report developing the direction it set out.
Phase one would be the publication of a draft handbook in May 2022 at the REC AGM which would explain the rationale, give a revised national statement of entitlement and practical steps for syllabus development. Phases two and three would be the development of a framework to apply the handbook in different contexts with exemplar units being trialled followed by a revision of the handbook. Implementation would follow in 2024.
He posed the question of whether religion and world views were totally separate things. Everybody had a world view in their own context of family and community and at different stages of life, and religion may or may not be part of it. He suggested six points for reflection: firstly, that this would be a long-term change; secondly, religion and world views were not lists and there should be a shift from a focus on knowledge to interpretation. Thirdly, everyone had a world view; there should be an understanding of ‘unbelief’ and a recognition that not all with faith have the same depth or engagement with their faith. Fourth, context and developments should be taken into account; the language used should change from religion to people (e.g. Islam to Muslim) and how they conduct their lives; what is orthodox and who determines this and how can change over time. Fifthly, should the ‘lived reality’ be highlighted, the relationship between organised and individual world views/religions. Finally, in considering the criteria for the selection of content for a national curriculum he questioned whether school RE leaders were best placed to lead the changes.
Elizabeth Jenkerson spoke about the two workshops she had attended on ‘being in a SACRE leadership team’ and ‘how SACRE’s can contribute to diversity and inclusion’. She highlighted the differing needs of urban and rural area SACREs and the varying amount of support that SACREs have available to them. In relation to diversity and inclusion Justine Ball mentioned the findings of her dissertation on world views and the teaching of Jesus. She had recorded an overview of her research, which was available on the Culham St Gabriel’s website under December 2021 Research of the Month. It is available together with a recorded “In Conversation with Dr Wendy Dossett here : In Conversation…. - Culham St Gabriel's (cstg.org.uk).It was noted that one of the appendices in Living Difference IV dealt with the place of religion in world views.