This article has been brought to you by Slough Borough Council on behalf of Bill Moore, the SACRE Advisor for RE in Slough. This is for the attention of the all Religious Education teachers.
Slough SACRE RE Newsletter Autumn 2024
Welcome to the Autumn term’s newsletter from SACRE. We do hope that you have had a good start to the year and that your classes are settled and thriving – and indeed that you are, too! Welcome to any new to RE and Slough – this is a Borough with diverse faith, belief and culture, a rich seam of resource for education in religion and worldviews.
This is a significant year in Slough and Pan-Berkshire, with the publication and launch of the new Agreed Syllabus(see below). On a wider national front, the new Government has launched its curriculum review and it is an opportunity for schools, teachers and others to contribute.
The Ofsted report in April emphasised the importance of CPD for teachers. Below you will find some suggested courses and resources. SACRE is keen to work with schools to develop appropriate training and support.
I have run the first of what I hope will be many networks. Details below for future ones.
Pan-Berkshire Syllabus – Progress to date
The review of the Pan-Berkshire syllabus is progressing. SACRE hopes to have a revised draft version available for the RE Network meeting. If you are a community or Voluntary Controlled school then this syllabus will be the legal basis for the RE curriculum that you teach, at all phases and key stages. Academies need to be providing similar or better.
If you are considering making changes to your curriculum, or purchasing any new schemes, SACRE recommends that you wait until the publication of the new syllabus to ensure that what you choose is compliant with the new syllabus.
Below is a brief outline of what is proposed, but please note that this is not yet finalised.
As in the current syllabus, the content will be led by enquiry questions, but will also contain suggested content, some of which will be identified as core.
- There will be a compulsory introductory unit in each year group, which will introduce the key concepts of religion and worldviews. This question has a suggested plan for the two lessons, and the ideas explored in the unit should be revisited during the course of the academic year.
- Christianity will be taught in every year group.
- By the end of Year 4 pupils will also have encountered Hindu Dharma, Islam, Judaism and Sikhi, as well as non-religious worldviews. The recommendation will be to alternate Abrahamic and Dharmic traditions. This should facilitate teaching in mixed age classes.
- In Upper Key Stage 2 teachers will have the choice of which of the previously taught traditions to cover, again with the recommendation to alternate between Dharmic and Abrahamic traditions. The opportunity is there to cover both Judaism and Islam in one year group and Hindu and Sikh Dharmas in the other, but schools can decide which is most appropriate for their pupils. There will be an option to include Buddhism, although the syllabus will recommend that this is left until KS3 unless there is a cogent reason. There will be a requirement to cover Humanism as well.
- At Key Stage 3 Islam, Buddhism are the main religions offered and Humanism must be included alongside Christianity.
- There will also be some philosophical and ethical questions that can be explored at KS3 with reference to any religious traditions that the school chooses.
- For Key Stage 4 the syllabus will recommend that all students should follow an accredited course in RS (GCSE full or short course), but some outlines for an approach to Core RS are included.
- There are also suggestions for how to include quality RS in KS5.
There will also be a suggested progression model, which schools may refer to if they wish. Assessment in RE must be in line with school assessment procedures in other subjects and must relate closely to the content that is taught, so the syllabus will contain principles and suggestions rather than a statutory assessment model. 
Booking information to follow soon. This event will be free to attend for one person per school. Max 150 places
SACRE meetings
Slough SACRE and Agreed Syllabus Conference will meet on 7th November to agree and recommend the syllabus to the LA.
The Spring Term meeting is on Weds 5th March
The Summer Term meeting is yet to be confirmed
CPD and dates.
There are plenty of opportunities for CPD for RE teachers, either in the shape of training events, or online support and resources.
If you are not yet a member of NATRE, I strongly recommend subscribing. The termly mailing is well worth it and you get full access to the NATRE website.
They run a monthly webinar for those new2RE plus other courses, support and resources. The site is open access, but membership gives greater support and materials.
Have you booked on to Strictly RE 2025?
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REOnline also provides excellent support both for subject leaders and for teachers.
Interfaith Week 2024 10th-17th November
Sharing My Story: Building Our Future
Join us for Interfaith Week to foster empathy, understanding, and social cohesion among students while enriching their knowledge of diverse faiths and beliefs!
Why celebrate Interfaith Week?
Engaging with Interfaith week will help contribute towards:
- Your statutory duty to promote Community Cohesion
- Celebrating diversity within your school and local communities
- Exploring pupils’ individual identity and shared humanity
- Developing and strengthening your school values, ethos and community
- Building stronger links with your local communities
- Your statutory duty to promote the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development (SMSC) of your pupils.
How can we help?
- By offering a curated selection of resources, relevant to the theme, so you can celebrate Interfaith Week in your classroom
- By suggesting 10 key events, activities and approaches your school can choose to run during the week
- In running live webinars for you to join in assemblies or in class, also recorded to be accessed throughout the year
- By sharing stories and images of your work after the week
Join our mailing list, to be kept up to date on developments of Interfaith Week for schools! The website will go live on 10th Oct 2024
Farmington Scholarships 2025-26
Applications for 2025/26 Scholarships will open in October 2024 and at that time their website will be updated with details of how to apply. The closing date for applications will be the end of January 2025. Check into their website (Scholarships - Farmington Institute) in October if you are interested.
These have been career changers for some and professional boosts for everyone involved. This is probably the CPD Gold-Standard not just in the RE world, but in education as a whole. They are fully funded and allow for research into an area of interest to you.
Scholarships - Farmington Institute
They have a new email address: institute@farmington.ac.uk
Holocaust Memorial Day 27th Jan 2025
‘For a better future’
“This Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex, and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.
80 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, antisemitism (anti-Jewish hatred) has increased significantly in the UK and globally following the 7 October attacks in Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza. Extremists are exploiting the situation to stir up anti-Muslim hatred in the UK. Many UK communities are feeling vulnerable, with hostility and suspicion of others rising. We hope that HMD 2025 can be an opportunity for people to come together, learn both from and about the past, and take actions to make a better future for all.
There are many things we can all do to create a better future. We can speak up against Holocaust and genocide denial and distortion; we can challenge prejudice; we can encourage others to learn about the Holocaust and more recent genocides.”
School resources can be found here.
Recent national developments and statutory requirements:
The last few years have seen the development of a number of initiatives and documents within RE. It is important to remember that there has been no change in the law and so all of these developments and resources are non-statutory. The basis for planning your school RE curriculum remains the Pan Berkshire Locally Agreed Syllabus, for maintained schools, or the equivalent for Trust and other Faith or Academy schools. However, these documents are all designed to support in the development, planning and implementation of high quality religious education.
- The National Content Standard
As mentioned in last year’s Autumn newsletter, the RE Council of England and Wales has produced a document to try to ensure that any Agreed Syllabus or equivalent used by Multi-Academy Trusts reaches a required standard to ensure that the RE curriculum planned in all schools is sufficiently robust, so that pupils in all schools receive their entitlement to high quality religious education. The National Content Standard does not specify what content must be studied, but rather sets a standard for the rigour and quality of curriculum provision. It is designed for those who are referred to as ‘curriculum publishers’ not for subject leaders in individual schools, though it may be of interest to you all. It has very useful appendices!
- The Worldviews Toolkit from the REC
The RE Council of England and Wales has produced a document to support Syllabus designers and school curriculum developers to provide ‘deep and meaningful’ RE through a worldviews approach. This is a non-statutory guidance and toolkit for developing deep and meaningful RE adapting a religion and worldviews approach. If you are a subject leader, it is helpful to plan your school curriculum, but you should remember that the statutory document for your curriculum is the appropriate agreed syllabus or equivalent. The whole resource and other relevant information can be accessed at https://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/rwapproach/ .
It is important to reflect on what a RWV approach might be and that there is no one model being proposed. The original Commission on RE Report, ‘Religion and Worldviews: The way forward’ (2018) describes a worldview as being “a person’s way of understanding, experiencing and responding to the world….This includes how a person understands the nature of reality and their own place in the world. A person’s worldview is likely to influence and be influenced by their beliefs, values, behaviours, experiences, identities and commitments” (p4)
As such, any RWV approach will be more than just an academic study of beliefs and practices; it will recognise the experiential and emotional dimensions of our ‘being-in-the-world’.
- ‘Deep and meaningful?’: The Ofsted subject report for Religious Education
Whilst not a comfortable read, the Ofsted Subject report is useful for all involved in RE. From a subject leader’s perspective, it contains helpful guidelines on what good RE looks like and what could be done to improve pupils’ experience of RE. You might share some of this with other teachers, the SLT and your governors. In particular, ensuring adequate time and time-tabling are provided for pupils and that teachers receive training in the teaching of RE and especially their subject knowledge.
The DfE curriculum review
In its statement of intention it sets out what it seeks to deliver:
- an excellent foundation in core subjects of reading, writing and maths
- a broader curriculum, with improved access to music, art, sport and drama, as well as vocational subjects
- a curriculum that ensures children and young people leave compulsory education ready for life and ready for work
- a curriculum that reflects the issues and diversities of our society, ensuring all children and young people are represented
- an assessment system that captures:
- the strengths of every child and young person
- the breadth of the curriculum
If you wish to contribute to this review, the link is here. Sections five and six are particularly relevant to RE. The deadline is 22nd Nov.
A reminder about collective worship
This is the responsibility of the Headteacher with the Governing Board. It is statutory to hold a daily act of collective worship for all pupils unless withdrawn by parents. It should be ‘wholly of mainly of a broadly Christian character’. It is collective not corporate, invitational within an educational context and setting and should be inclusive, with best practice drawing on sources beyond Christianity, to include other faiths and beliefs, so that the school ethos and values can be celebrated and shared within a wider context that prepares pupils to contribute positively to life in modern Britain.
It is separate from religious education and does not form part of taught curriculum time. The responsibility can be delegated by the Headteacher, but it is not the responsibility of the RE lead.
A useful resource for assemblies is Picture News:
Teaching Resources for Assemblies | Picture News (picture-news.co.uk)
SACRE is available to provide advice and support.
A reminder about curriculum plans.
Schools must publish their curriculum on their website, providing an overview of each subject curriculum for each year group and the curriculum intent, implementation and impacts statements. This includes RE.
Networks
We held a network meeting of Weds 25th Sept. Our next one will be on Tues 3rd Dec from 4-5pm. If you wish to be included in the network and have not yet signed up, email Bill Moore, SACRE adviser, bjvmoore@justbmoore.com