Minutes:
The Chairman referred to the meeting which was held between Councillor Dixon, Miss Bainbridge, Canon Burton, Isobel Short (The Specialist Inspector for Religious Education) and Phil Hodgson (Strategic Manager Support and Development). At this meeting they discussed the 9 days of The Specialist Inspector’s time for SACRE which did not include SACRE’s annual report which was a statutory obligation.
They also discussed at the meeting the possibility of SACRE writing the report which the Chairman rejected as it needed to be a professional document, as it was in the public domain which would be under the Durham County Council banner. It was suggested that the SACRE annual report be submitted to Cabinet and that they needed to speak to the Portfolio Holder for Children and Young People’s Services.
The Specialist Inspector for Religious Education indicated that she did not think it was Phil Hodgson’s intention that no monitoring of primary schools would take place and indicated that some sample monitoring could take place for a short period of time through Education Development Service if requested by the RE Inspector.
The Chairman indicated that her recollection was that given the large number of primary schools, monitoring of primary schools had to be ongoing and this information would be needed for the annual report.
W Gray suggested that Primary Monitoring for SACRE could also be built into the service. She also suggested that rather than focus on funding, the Task Group look more at the service. They had been allocated 9 days per year of time from the Specialist Inspector for Religious Education for SACRE, no primary monitoring and the Annual report could be written by the Inspector as a Cabinet report. The next task group meeting could look at how they could support the Education Development Service and find a way forward.
Councillor Dixon suggested that he and the Specialist Inspector for Religious Education work together to find some appropriate wording for this section of the account of the meeting.
C Spencer sought clarification on the number of requests which had been received for withdrawal from Religious Education.
The Specialist Inspector for Religious Education responded that she had not received any requests since the last meeting.