Issue - meetings

The Chairman stated that he hoped that Bracknell Forest Council would be funding the review and felt confident that this would be the case as it remained to be a statutory obligation.

It was noted that an agreed syllabus conference would need to be established by June 2011, in order to take this review forward. It was agreed that a conference be convened prior to the March 2011 SACRE meeting to see who would like to participate in the review and to set up working groups.

The SACRE Associate Advisor reported that five local authorities were committed to undertaking the review jointly, she needed to confirm that Reading Borough Council still wanted to be involved in a joint review as they had recently made their R.E specialist advisor redundant. She stated that she would work with West Berkshire to put together a number of costed models that could be brought to the March 2011 SACRE meeting and members could consider which model they would like to opt for. She stated that although the review would be a joint one, working groups could work on individual parts of the syllabus.

It was agreed that the SACRE Associate Advisor would draft a co-ordinated questionnaire for teachers’ to complete across the five local authorities to get a flavour of what they thought of the current syllabus. This information could then be used to inform the review process. SACRE members felt it was important that teachers knew that the syllabus was reviewed every five years and that feedback from them on what worked well and what needed to be changed was crucial.

The Chairman asked that the results of the questionnaire be brought before SACRE for their March 2011 meeting.