Agenda item

To discuss a pamphlet entitled “A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools” produced by Charles Clarke and Linda Woodhead as part of the Westminster Faith Debates series.

The meeting considered the report entitled A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools, the authors of which were The Rt Hon Charles Clarke and Linda Woodhead MBE DD as part of the Westminster Faith Debates series.

The report included discussion on the Act of Collective Worship, Religious Education, Curriculum and Faith Schools. Recommendations made included:

(a)  The current requirement in statute for an Act of Collective Worship should be abolished, and the decision about the form and character of school assemblies should be left to the governors of individual schools. Schools should be required to set out their statement and strategy for promoting Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Education, with school community assemblies as an important part of that strategy, upon which they would be inspected by OFSTED.  The government should provide non-statutory guidance to help achieve this.

(b)  The Religious Education syllabus in county and voluntary controlled schools should no longer be set by a system of agreed local syllabuses, but by an agreed national syllabus which would have a similar legal status to the requirements of other subjects in the National Curriculum.

(c)  The local Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (SACREs) are given a new role which includes participating in the consultations about the content of the national RE curriculum, helping local implementation of the national RE syllabus, promoting community cohesion and educating for diversity, and advising on local availability of religious instruction.

(d)  Further effort be given to developing alternative proposals for fairer admissions procedures to faith schools, procedures which balance the rights of families of faith to have their children educated in that faith with other considerations of fairness to others and serving the whole local community.

The meeting agreed that the current guidance which states that all schools should provide daily collective worship that was broadly Christian in nature was difficult to achieve as it involved pupils of other or no particular faith. It was noted that many schools had now replaced collective worship with reflection and that if reflection was made meaningful then learning would take place and it would respect those for whom worship was not appropriate or relevant.

The report recommended that consideration be given to using the phrase ‘Religious and Moral Education’ rather than ‘Religious Education’ but the meeting felt that ‘Religious and Moral Education’ was a rather outdated phrase.  The meeting considered that some other parts of the report were out of date and did not reflect that pupils were encouraged to get involved in assembly and collective worship which could take place at any time of day in any normal group of pupils.

The report identified a number of specific and important roles for SACREs one of which was that SACREs should play a role in promoting the priorities of community cohesion and educating for diversity.  Anne Andrews advised that the latest resident’s survey showed a strong sense of cohesion between faith organisations and non-faith organisations which suggested good cohesion was being promoted by schools in the borough.