Agenda item

Monitoring of RE

Minutes:

The Chairman referred to the information contained in the RE Commission report and the long-term concerns of monitoring of RE, in particular that some pupils were not receiving their legal entitlement of RE provision, which was discussed at the last SACRE meeting. As agreed at the last SACRE meeting a letter was sent to D Hinds (Secretary of State for Education) raising SACRE’s concerns. A copy of the letter that had been sent to D Hinds was available for members to view.

 

The RE Advisor advised members that herself and K Passmore had met HMI Mark Evans at a conference in York in March and they spoke to him after the conference. She had followed up the meeting with an e-mail to his office registering the concerns of SACRE.

 

She then referred to Primary EDPs and advised members that she had met with 9 or 10 primary EDPs and had made the point of raising the profile of RE when visiting schools. She would continue trying to raise the profile of RE with secondary EDPs.

 

M Dixon was going to meet the Portfolio Holder for Children and Young People’s Service but unfortunately, he was unable to attend the meeting today to provide an update.

 

The RE Adviser then referred to the Questionnaire NQTs (primary) on Initial Teacher Training and advised that she had met a number of trainees who were finishing their first year of teaching and had asked them to complete the questionnaire about training. The questionnaires had not been analysed and she asked if a small group could analyse the results, for SACRE to discuss at a future meeting.

 

V Bain, S Baker, Canon L Burton, B Dunn and S Lupton agreed to form a working group to analyse the questionnaires and meet up with K Passmore to discuss the results.

 

Members were referred to a recent SACRE briefing where it was reported that N Lawson from the Curriculum Unit of the Department for Education had written to the Chair of NASACRE, P Smalley setting out the expectations of the government with regards to school compliance in RE. The Chairman indicated that he hoped to hear something positive back from the letter.

 

W Gray referred to SACREs obligation to monitor RE in schools on behalf of Durham County Council.

 

The RE Advisor responded that the role of SACRE was to advise the local authority on matters of RE and collective worship and referred to the 2010 guidance that detailed the sort of things that SACRE could advise on. There was nothing in the document which specified monitoring, only advising and Durham County Council does not have any authority over academies.

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