Minutes:
The Specialist Inspector for Religious Education gave a PowerPoint presentation on Religious Education/Religious Studies for Key Stage 4 (for copy of presentation, see file of minutes).
During the presentation members were advised that Religious Education was statutory at Key stage 4 and always had been.
Traditionally GCSE/O Level Religious Studies was the same hours of teaching as other GCSEs. Non-examination compulsory Religious Education for all was one lesson a week. Durham Agreed Syllabus had a programme of study for non-examination CORE Religious Education.
In the Mid 1990s, Ofsted was introduced and schools were held to account if not meeting statutory duty to provide CORE Religious Education which led to change with the introduction of Short Course Religious Education to be taught to all with accreditation for all who entered the exam. This led to a huge increase in numbers across the country of students being entered for an exam in Religious Education. Sometimes the full course in Religious Education was not offered at all, the short course was offered to all but not taken seriously.
In 2010, there was another shift in schools where only a full course mattered as to how a school was judged and a short course did not count towards the school data. A lot of schools were now teaching a full course in core time which was one hour a week which meant there was not enough time to cover the course and get good results. Others were only offering CORE Religious Education as part of a PSHE programme based on ethics and some were ignoring the law and not offering Religious Education at all.
2016 would see new GCSEs which would be more rigorous and all exams would be taken at the end of Year 11.
SACRE Members were asked to think about how SACRE should respond, what should they recommend and how this affected the Agreed Syllabus revision, the subject would be discussed in more detail at the next meeting.
Resolved: (i) That the presentation be noted.
(ii) That the Provision for RE at Key Stage 4 be discussed at the next SACRE meeting.