Agenda and minutes

Apologies for Absence had been received from Councillor David Routledge,

Lucy Russell and Amir Ahmed.

The minutes of the meeting held on 24 March 2010 were agreed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman; subject to the amendment that Eric Blaire was not the Vice-Chairman. There was the following matter arising:

Item 4 – Brunel Research Project - Update by Peter Hemming

Eric Blaire advised that the Brunel Research Project was moving on to Stage two, which involved talking to children; including children with special needs. It was noted that Mildred Atubo, Advisory Teacher would be involved at this stage of the research.

The Chairman commented that individual schools would receive feedback and schools would be asked to give permission in order to gather evidence. This evidence would highlight clusters and this would be examined to see how that reflected in the answers that children had given and would be compared with the clusters in the Borough.

It was noted that the research would be finalised with a conference at the Civic centre.

Anna Crispin, Deputy Director for Education and Children’s Services was welcomed to the meeting and invited by the Chairman to give a brief introduction.

She thanked the Forum for inviting her to the meeting and advised that she had recently joined the Council. In extending her full support and understanding of SACRE within Hillingdon, she explained that as a senior officer, she would be representing the link to SACRE, and considered that it was her role to pass on the key message, in order to ensure that it was heard within the directorate.

Anna Crispin said that she had already visited many schools and intended to visit all the primary and secondary schools in Hillingdon. During a visit to Yeading Junior School, she was delighted to see the work going on in the school and encouraged that the children chose to talk about the interfaith work that they had been doing, and proud that families were involved in working with schools.

The chairman thanked Anna Crispin on behalf of the Forum for attending the meeting.

• Final details
• The launch

Final Details

The Forum was informed that the final amendments to Hillingdon Agreed Syllabus had been made and electronic copies had been sent to those who had requested them.

The Launch

It was noted that the first part of the launch would include an input from staff and pupils at KS3. The second part would involve a workshop.

During discussion, the following points were noted:

·        That before the election, there had been discussion around the QCDA in respect of Religious Education (RE) and that there had been no change, as RE remained outside the National Curriculum. Any issues around the Rose report would therefore not be implemented.

·        Transforming RE - The issue of teachers without strong RE background teaching RE in schools. The forum was advised that it was legally within the teacher’s right to say on faith grounds that they were not prepared to teach RE. However, where there was a shortage of RE qualified teachers (particularly in secondary schools), RE had been incorporated within the Humanities

·        That HSACRE did not have access to the necessary information to be able to give local advice in respect of this issue.

It was reported that the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA), the statutory body that SACRE was required to produce the Annual report for, was being closed down.  Further instruction from the Secretary of States was being awaited as to where the report should be sent.

Anna Crispin suggested that the final report should be presented to the Policy Committee for Children, with an overview of SACRE to raise awareness of the work that was being done.

The issue of how the expenditure for SACRE was funded and whether the budget was sufficient was raised.  It was confirmed that the budget for SACRE was being funded by Children’s Services and it would need to be supplemented this financial year, due to the production and widespread distribution of the Hillingdon Agreed Syllabus.

A member asked for the Agreed Syllabus to be uploaded on the Hillingdon grid, so that it could be easily accessed.

Eric Blaire reported that he had attended the Annual Meeting of the Londonand South East SACREs on 18 June 2010, which looked at and identified various issues. It was noted that it had been predicted at the meeting that the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) and

SEF may no longer be in existence.

The meeting noted that one of the issues identified was the need to develop methods of inducting new members to SACRE. One method that was explored was to identify induction tutors.

It was noted that NASACRE currently produced a CD to help people new to SACRE, which could be used.

A new member commented that the CD would be welcomed, particularly in helping to understand the jargons used. They advised that the draft Hillingdon Agreed Syllabus as well as Government news letters had proved very useful.

The Forum was advised that NASACRE had resorted to producing the CD for  training new members, as there had been a low uptake to the previous method, which required new members to attend training over a 2 day period, as well as an additional day with a SACRE other than their own.

It was agreed that a report exploring this issue should be submitted to the next meeting on 9 November 2010.

Ideas were sought for celebrating RE in March 2011 in Hillingdon.  It was noted that the focus could be on the work of SACRE and RE in schools and places of worship.

A leaflet developed by the Religious Education Council of England and Wales (CelebratingRE …exploring values and beliefs for tomorrow’s world) was handed out at the meeting. The leaflet promoted the celebration of RE in England and Wales in March 2011 and outlined its aims for that month. Further details could be found at www.celebratingre.org.

The Forum requested that the organisation be invited to attend the event that would be organised in March 2011 by HSACE.

Eric Blaire briefly mentioned the NASACRE Annual Conference he attended

in May 2010 .He commented that the issue of the need to review how HSACRE functioned and how it could do better was raised. Members were asked to report back on any good RE practices observed in schools. 

The Chairman announced that he would like to adopt a model where faith representatives worked together in schools. The aim would be for a team (consisting of people of different faiths) to go into schools and work with students in class. He advised that he would like to initially encourage some secondary schools to adopt the system. It was noted that the Hayes cluster was currently being considered, as it fell within the Hillingdon Trust area.

Schools would be contacted and advised that the faith representatives would need to also work with parents, as they would be asked about their faith journeys. Older children in schools would be asked to dress-up and talk to the other children.

The meeting acknowledged that in order to proceed with this model, a bank of resources would need to be developed, and that some form of training would be required.

During discussions, the following issues were raised in respect of this proposal:

• Ideas of peoples journeys could be found in books
• People in the team would need to be carefully selected to ensure that they were the right calibre
• It was needed to ensure that the right information would be disseminated
• It was imperative that faith representatives were knowledgeable about their area
• That the issue of ensuring that people were CRB checked
• That the issue of diversity must be made clear

Suggested resources included:

·        Yeading Faith Community to deliver, whilst the children listened

·        Clusters of schools could swap over to teach each other

A member added that the idea of peer information would be very effective at primary level, as a child would empathise with a child of their own age.

Kevin Guest, Headteacher of Grange Park Junior School reported that there was a Yeading cluster of schools, an extended schools collaborative, which consisted of hob schools (an attached number of schools) and was accountable to the Council. He advised that working in a cluster would be ideal, as one school could not possibly provide all the resources.

Members heard that multi-faith events had been used in a collaborative way, covering all the years in primary, infant and junior to celebrate multi-faith in the Yeading cluster by Hillingdon Inter Faith Network (HIFN) and members of SACRE.

Members agreed to pursue the issue further.

The Chairman reported that information giving advice to schools on the issue of Ramadan, based around the work of SACRE was circulated annually to schools. He explained that over a year ago, Education Welfare Officers (EWO) identified serious issues in some schools, relating to absence at the end of year, where some children had taken more than one day off during school time.

Members noted that a meeting was held on 2 June 2010 with Community Muslim Leaders in Hillingdon to formulate and developed an updated advice to school for 2010. The draft advice was handed out at the meeting. Some of the advice/information highlighted at the meeting was as follows:

• Ramadan this year would start from 12 August to 10 September 2010
• Schools would need to know whether their pupils would be fasting (for a number of reasons)
• Teachers and Non-Teaching staff would need to be informed about being respectful to others
• Try to bring to the attention of the faith community that children would be tired
• Raise awareness of the various issues set out in the draft advice note
• Develop a website for parents to refer to for information.

The Forum was asked to endorse the draft advice so that it could be circulated to schools.

A member commented that the advice note should also inform schools to ensure that it was emphasised to parents that absence would only be agreed for one day.

It was also pointed out that schools should be alerted doing the transition period to the fact that some children would be in the midst of fasting. There should be some emphasis in the guidance for schools to acknowledge that for some children, fasting was something that would be expected during this period of time. This could also be mentioned in the first year assembly as well as during form tutor contact.

It was noted that Chairman would liaise with the Director of Education and Children’s Services to develop guidance for Headteachers in respect of Ramadan at the start of the new school term.

The meeting endorsed the circulation of the advice on Ramadan to all schools.

The information item relating to the Resilience Newsletter was noted.

Audit of Places of Worship

The Chairman advised that an audit of places of worship in the borough had been undertaken by Hillingdon Inter Faith Network. Details about the places of worship could now be accessed by any member of the public at hifn.co.uk. It was noted that £6,000 had been allocated for printing costs by Awards for All.Copies of the list would be available in the next academic year, which could be distributed to all schools, so long as SACRE supported the initiative. 

Interfaith Meeting – 17 June 2010

It was noted that the Chairman had been invited to an inter faith meeting on 17 June 2010, to discuss the issue of refugees and unaccompanied asylum seekers. The outcome of the meeting will be reported to the next SACRE meeting on 9 November 2010.

Week of Peace

SACRE members were asked to start thinking about what they could do to support the week of peace.  The following was noted:

• The Week of Peace would be from 19 September to 26 September 2010
• The Week of Faith would also be repeated in November 2010
• At the next SACRE meeting on Tuesday 9 November 2010, Laura McNamee, Co-opted member, would explore RE as she saw it. The meeting would be hosted by Grange Park Junior school, Landsbury Drive, Hayes, Middlesex, UB4 8SF