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 - July 2024
Welcome to a belated newsletter for the end of the school year!
Let me introduce myself. I am Bill Moore, the new adviser for Slough SACRE. I am also adviser to two other SACREs, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, and was until the end of this term also adviser to Oxfordshire. I am very much looking forward to working with you and Slough SACRE.
First, a big thank you to David Rees. He has supported RE and collective worship in Slough extremely well, especially as he has had to do so from a significant distance. I have known and worked with Dave for a number of years both within the Jigsaw team and beyond.
I am slowly getting my head around the work Dave has been doing – there is a lot! I know that he runs network meetings as well as this newsletter, and I intend for these to continue. So, in that grand tradition, we will start the newsletter with a request for the direct email for the RE co-ordinator/HoD in school, particularly if the person has changed recently. We want to assure you that we will not bombard the RE lead with emails but will update them on free CPD and support provided by SACRE. It is so important for us all to be able to connect and keep up to date as there are some major developments in RE locally and nationally over the next year and it would be great to be able to inform the relevant RE leader, so please could you let the SACRE adviser for RE, Bill Moore, know using the email below. There are still quite a few gaps in our database and we are aware that some information about networks, newsletters and resources is not directly reaching the RE lead – it would be so helpful if you could let us know by the end of this term.
Please send the details to the SACRE RE Adviser, Bill Moore: bjvmoore@justbmoore.com
We are very grateful to those schools who have already done this and look forward to seeing their RE leads at upcoming events which will hopefully be arranged this year.
One of the ways SACREs can support schools is by producing newsletters, like this, designed to inform RE teachers and leaders of some or all of the following.
• Local and national RE developments
• Free classroom resources
• Upcoming CPD opportunities
• News from faith communities – national and local
SACRE is also pleased to provide primary RE support in the shape of free RE networks run by the SACRE RE adviser. The one planned for the Autumn term is Wednesday 25th Sept 4.00-5.00 pm. At this meeting, we will discuss what you would like to cover, how frequently to meet and in what format. If you would like to attend or receive information about support for RE, please email me and I will email out a Zoom link to those who confirm. One thing we might consider for the future, if people are keen, is to meet in a school with a Zoom link for those who find a virtual meting preferable or easier.
If you have anything you would like covered in any of the meetings, please do send me suggestions – we want the networks to be as useful as possible. We are always aware of the many demands on your time so thank you in advance for your support and attendance.
Local RE News
The Pan Berkshire Hub
The Pan Berkshire Hub (a group consisting of members of 6 Berkshire SACREs (namely Bracknell Forest, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Slough, Slough, West Berkshire and Wokingham) continues to meet under the expert leadership of Anne Andrews and work together to help provide support and resources to help Berkshire teachers. The Hub produced some excellent free teaching resources in the form of video clips and support notes. The ‘Real People, Real Faith’ project produced Key Stage 1-3 classroom clips, these have been available for teachers to use since April 2021. The project set out to ask believers from different places of worship and religion and worldview communities’ questions about their faith and how it impacts on daily life – these were professionally filmed and edited with the classroom in mind. SACRE is pleased to announce that the Humanism clips are now uploaded. Teacher notes have also been produced to accompany each video clip. They are hosted on the NATRE website https://www.natre.org.uk/about-natre/projects/real-people-real-faith/ SACRE is delighted that the site has had over 4500 hits and hopes they will continue to be used.
The Pan Berkshire Agreed Syllabus is in its last stages of development and will be launched on Thursday 27th March 2025 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Winnersh Triangle. I have to admit that this will take me down memory lane, as I started teaching in 1984 at The Forest School!
National news
OFSTED RE Subject Report
The long-awaited Subject Report for RE has now been published. Whilst it identifies some serious concerns about RE nationally, it also has some helpful suggestions for all involved in the provision of RE, including government, syllabus developers, CPD providers and ITE providers as well as schools. There are also some useful examples of effective practice. You can access the full report here.
Schools Week has produced a useful summary here.
SACRE is keen to work closely with schools to ensure that our provision of a subject as important as RE continues to grow and develop as an enriching and engaging part of the whole school curriculum.
Key recommendations are that schools should:
- ensure that there is a distinct curriculum in place for teaching RE at all key stages. They should make sure that this is rigorous and challenging and that it demonstrably builds on what pupils already know
- carefully select the knowledge they expect pupils to gain to make sense of a complex and diverse world. They should make sure that important content and concepts are clearly identified and sequenced. They should also make sure that curriculums do not contain oversimplifications of traditions, including, where appropriate, non-religious traditions
- balance the breadth and depth of study of religious and non-religious traditions to ensure that these are collectively enough for pupils to make sense of a complex world
- ensure that all pupils have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge in RE over time. Leaders in secondary schools should make sure that the curriculum is designed to meet or exceed exam board specifications (rather than being driven by them)
- make sure that curriculums clearly identify how pupils will develop disciplinary and personal knowledge through the chosen substantive content.
Please do read it and share it with your Head teacher and staff team.
NATRE’s response can be found here.
Developing a Religion and Worldviews Approach in RE in England – A Handbook for Curriculum Writers
The RE Council has produced a guidance document for ‘curriculum writers’. They explain this in the introduction:
“The Handbook is primarily written to assist those who are developing syllabuses and curriculums for RE with a religion and worldviews (RW) approach, including local authorities Standing Advisory Councils on RE (SACREs), Agreed Syllabus Conferences (ASCs), dioceses, and curriculum leaders in multi-academy trusts (MATs) and other academy trusts.”
So, it is not intended as guidance for developing individual school curriculums, but is relevant to schools and others to support the implementation of a worldviews approach. Below is the link to the REC website resource.
Events, resources and links
RExChange 2024
Culham St Gabriel is running a free course from 1pm on Friday 18th to 1pm Sat 19th Oct. The good news is that it is not a 24 hour marathon! Details can be found here:
https://www.reonline.org.uk/research/engaging-with-research/conferences/rexchange-2024/
These are very worthwhile conferences with input from teachers, consultants and academics.
Regional RE Hubs
This is a one-stop-shop – please access and use as often as you can. https://www.re-hubs.uk/
Regional RE Hubs have been set up to build relationships with advisers, dioceses, universities, SACREs, LAs, governors, MATs, teaching school hubs and more. The Regional Leads will also act as conduits between the regional providers of research, CPD, resources, places of worship and so on for the benefit of all Religion and Worldview stakeholders. The website signposts many useful RE links including REQM and a growing list of regional speakers for school visits – check out the website here https://www.re-hubs.uk/
From REOnline https://www.reonline.org.uk/
RE Online is a free quality-controlled website designed to support teachers with many different aspects of teaching and leading RE. The website has excellent knowledge essays designed to help teacher subject knowledge – these cover up to 15 different religions and worldviews and are written by experts in the field. These can be found at https://www.reonline.org.uk/ under the knowledge tab.
A popular part of the website features free online courses run by Culham St Gabriel’s Trust.
These include short courses on:
• Introduction to Religion and Worldviews
• Digging Deeper: Religion and Worldviews
• Introduction to Subject Knowledge
• Introduction to Research
These can be accessed by following this link - https://courses.cstg.org.uk/
Holocaust Memorial Day 27th Jan 2025
The theme for 2025 is ‘For a better future’. There will be resources and ideas for schools published next term. With much of what is currently going on in the world, this theme is most significant. It will be the young people in our schools who will both face and build the future. Schools have a key role to play here. https://www.hmd.org.uk/take-part-in-holocaust-memorial-day/schools/
Birmingham Faith visits
Supported by a grant from Westhill Endowment Trust, The Arts Society Birmingham has collaborated with six different places of worship, Birmingham Faith Leaders and other organisations to produce resources designed to enhance a school visit, or to support a virtual visit, to a place of worship for children 8 to 13 years.
These arts-related cross-curricular activities are designed to provide background information for teachers and to complement the RE curriculum for Key Stages 2 and 3. They provide opportunities to explore the arts in places of worship and to help children to be more curious and reflective. They are deliberately not listed as relevant to a particular religion so that similarities as well as differences between religions may be appreciated.
The activities are grouped in three colour-coded sections:
RED: About Buildings
BLUE: Imagery and Symbols of Sacred Spaces
GREEN: Building Bridges with Communities
The website includes information and clips for Sikh, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Christian and Buddhist places of worship.
To access their free resources, follow the link… https://birmingham-faith-visits.theartssociety.org/
Teaching Humanism
On the ‘Understanding Humanism’ website you’ll find a wide range of resources to support you to
teach about humanism, a non-religious approach to life.
The humanist approach and understanding have been divided into five core areas of knowledge:
• Human beings (human evolution, human nature, and human potential)
• Understanding the world (naturalism and atheism, science and reason)
• The one life (freedom, happiness, and mortality)
• Humanist ethics (empathy and the impact of our actions)
• Society (motivations, actions, goals, and responsibility)
You will also find resources to support teaching about a number of other topics connected with
humanism and non-religious worldviews.
To view these resources on teaching Humanism please check out the following link
https://understandinghumanism.org.uk/
Learn Islam is a group of doctors, trustees, professionals, teachers and volunteers, which has been setup to help teachers. We work to provide high quality material related to Islam for free that has been verified, so that teachers are able to teach these topics in schools from young years to teenagers with more confidence and ease. These include:
- PowerPoints slides for Primary and Secondary Schools.
- Worksheets and Quizzes based on the slides to assess knowledge.
- Covering KS1 through to KS4.
- These are aligned to the RE syllabus, based on SACRE guidelines for Primary Schools and GCSE for Secondary Schools
- 88 recorded words on how to pronounce them based on the curriculum
- Resources can be found on our website www.learn-islam.co.uk
- We also have content on social media to help students and teachers engage to obtain better knowledge:
- Instagram link @LearnIslamUK
- http://instagram.com/learnislamuk
- Facebook link @LearnIslamUK
- https://m.facebook.com/LearnIslamUK/
- TikTok @LearnIslamUK
- https://tiktok.com/@learnislamuk
- Later we aim to record the slides with a voice over so that teachers can just play the videos on the relevant topics, these will be placed on our YouTube channel:
- We can also arrange school visits to a local mosque for schools that are interested or a speaker to attend a school for a talk
- To help teachers struggling with topics in relation to Islam, we aim to provide virtual workshops. Simply contact us and we will set one up for the school on the topic the school wishes to cover.
We are continuing to create the content. However, if the content/topic the teacher is looking for covering is not found on the site. Just email us with your request learnislamforfree@gmail.com and we will be happy to support where possible or answer any questions.
From a local school…
Year 12 Question Time at Slough and Eton
The RE department at Slough and Eton organised a ‘question time’ for Year 12 students, where a panel of seven guests from various religious and non-religious groups, chaired by our own school Chaplain Fr. Andrew Wickens, discussed the big question ‘How can communities work together more effectively’. Some of the questions discussed included: - How can we ensure that there is more tolerance between different religions?, How would you deal with the division between the youth of the communities as a result of rising cases of racism?, What specific areas need the most work done to achieve community cohesion?, How can religious communities support other religious communities despite their differences?, What causes the most conflicts between communities?, any many more follow up questions by Year 12 audiences. The chairman and panel were lively, engaging, and provided a very enjoyable and informative morning with some serious food for thought. The success of the event can be measured by impact it had on Year 12s as they were heard continuing to discuss and reflect on the discussion during their lunch time! A comment from Year 12 student sums it up, ‘I think it was well put together and overall, it was a good insight into new perspectives.’
If you have any school RE news, announcements, questions or suggestions for the next newsletter please email me and I will include what I can.
This might be:
- A lesson idea that worked well
- A question about RE or the agreed syllabus
- A CPD that you ran or attended
- An aspect of your school RE curriculum
- A visit or visitor
- A good resource
Anything to celebrate RE and help others in this important aspect of education.
SACRE hopes that this newsletter contains useful ideas to help you in the coming term. We will
send another newsletter towards the start of the Autumn term marking another new academic year.
SACRE sends very best wishes to you for the welcome summer break and as always commends you for all your hard work and dedication.
Bill Moore
Adviser to SACRE
bjvmoore@justbmoore.com