Curriculum & Controversy: RE

I have the absolute privilege to be leading a session at this forthcoming conference:

A learning symposium about teaching RE in the current educational climate and networking opportunity for teachers of RE - open to all teachers (not just Teach First trained teachers)

My session will be the Future of RE. Much of my thinking on this will come from a Culham St Gabriel's Thinking Day. There is a lot on Twitter if you follow the #rethinkRE tag <here>.

The RE Thinking Days: #rethinkRE

Day 1 in March 2015, featured a lot of discussion, sharing of ideas... and arguing! It was clear there would be no clear agreement or consensus from the RE community. Our final task of the conference was to try and write a prospective OFSTED subject report for 2020, giving a broad overview of what was good and what needed further attention. At the end of the day our notes were all collected and two reports created. I quote Neil McKain's summaries:

• Report A argued for a core National Curriculum document providing clear guidance as to the key/core knowledge all students in all kinds of schools should be expected to know from KS1- KS3. The annexes for the new GCSE and A Level specs have already set out the knowledge required for KS4/5.
• Report B argued against a national curriculum and wished to reform and improve the current local determination.

This highlights just one of the key divisions in current thinking. Some of the key areas of thinking were the following and I will be exploring these further in my session:

• The Purpose of RE
• SACRE/LAS vs a core or national curriculum (and the problems this potentially creates)
• RE vs SMSC/British Values/Community Cohesion
• Primary vs Secondary
• Knowledge vs Skills 

Neil McKain has written a blog post for RE:Online about our groups discussion on Day 2 and it is a worth while read in it's entirety <here>.

Book your FREE tickets <here>