Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence had been received from Duncan Struthers, Cllr Avtar Sandhu, Cllr David Routledge, Heather Steady and Hilary Stone.

The Chairman thanked the Board of Management for allowing the SACRE meeting to take place at the Ruislip Synagogue.

The meeting was not quorate; the minutes of the meeting held on 9 November 2010 were therefore noted. These would be agreed at the next meeting, subject to it being quorate.

It was noted that the heading on Item 12 (Minutes) should read June 2010 and not March 2010.

Eric Blaire updated the meeting about a letter NASACRE had sent to Michael Grove, Secretary of State, Department for Education in December 2011, about the inclusion of Religious Education (RE) in the English Baccalaureate. In his response, the Secretary of State had advised that RE was not a subject for which there was competition, as it was compulsory and would not work in comparability with competitors in other countries; since it was not compulsory in those other countries.

Highlighted in the letter was the fact that the English Baccalaureate had been introduced in order for students to see how well they were doing compared to students in other countries in the core subjects of English Language, mathematics, the sciences, an ancient or modern language and a humanities subject. That it was possible for students to secure GCSEs in these subjects and there was enough time in the curriculum for them to also achieve GCSEs in other subjects or to follow vocational learning. 

During discussion, it was requested for details to be provided about the number of students that were successful in attaining ‘A’ level in Religious Studies in 2010.

It was suggested that many parents did not place sufficient importance on RE and that schools should perhaps be looking at educating parents of their responsibility in this area.

The meeting agreed that a letter of response should be sent to the Secretary of State to reiterate that whilst it was appropriate to retain RE as part of the curriculum, it should still be considered for inclusion as part of the English Bacalaureate.

The meeting was informed that the programme of Faith in Schools was proceeding well and a number of discussion sessions for facilitators had taken place. It was expected that once the facilitators had been trained, they would make presentations to children in a small cluster of schools in the south of the borough. If successful, the scheme would be rolled out to schools in the whole borough.

It was noted that a couple of training sessions had already taken place in Minet Infant school, as a pilot but the facilitators had not yet gone into schools. Indication from feedback on the scheme showed that it was a good addition to the syllabus. The idea of the scheme was for the practical working life of a person’s faith to be shared with school children.

It was noted that prospectus facilitators were lay people who did not have any relationship with schools. A suggestion put forward was that teachers (other than RE teachers) from other departments could also be encouraged to talk about their fatihs.

Eric Blaire advised that 10,000 children from Hillingdon, Newham and Bradford had completed questionnaires on Youth on Religion conducted by Brunel University in 2010 academic year. The outcome of the survey had yet to be published, but in the meantime, Brunel University had arranged a launch on 6 July 2011 to give an update on their progress.

It was noted that some of the 150 sixth formers who had been individually interviewed about their views would be involved in the launch on 6 July 2011.

The meeting heard that further funding was being sought to continue the Youth on Religion, a two year project.  Alison Fothergill (on behalf of HSACRE) was producing an analysis from the local data available for Hillingdon. Professor Nicola Madgeat Brunel University was the lead on the project funded by the Economic and History Research Council. It was noted that the data would be used to produce a report for Hillingdon alongside the awaited report from Brunel University.

The meeting noted that a copy of the questionnaire would be placed on the Council’s website and Hillingdon grid.

The meeting was updated on the recent Secondary Heads of RE conference which had taken on place on 14 February 2011and was advised that another meeting had been arranged for next term. It was intended that these meetings would be self-running on a regular basis and agreed that separate conferences would also be arranged in the future for ‘A’ level and ‘AS’ level teachers of RE, probably at Haydon School.

An update was also given on the Primary, Infant and Junior RE Co-ordinators’ half day Bring and Share conference which took place on 7 March 2011, at which Keith Field was a provider. It was hoped that this type of conference would also become self-functioning but acknowledged that it may be a challenge to get it running. 

In response to the question of setting up a joint conference, it was noted that this may not be so easy to achieve, as secondary schools were led by exams and primary schools by teaching and learning. However, those present agreed that an annual meeting between secondary and primary Heads of RE would be useful.

Comments were invited from those who had attended the training session on 17 February 2011. These were as follows:

• Had not heard of Hillingdon SACRE (HSACRE) before. The training session gave an insight into HSACRE and an understanding of different views, religious or otherwise
• That HSACRE, whilst it appeared to be very informal, was a statutory body
• That HSACRE appeared to be flexible enough to allow individuals to express their own views

The meeting discussed ways of making HSACRE more effective and made the following points:

• Make agendas more exciting
• Practical activities might be valuable
• Make presentation on the themes in the Agreed Syllabus
• The above points would lead to better attendance and consistently quorate meetings
• Update the Constitution
• Members to tender their apologies if they are not able to attend and send substitute members where possible.

• Date of the next meeting  - The date of the next meeting was confirmed as Wednesday 22 June 2011
• RE Assessment Results  - It was noted that monitoring RE results should not only be through examination results, as established examinations were not necessarily the best way of assessing what a child had learnt. The meeting considered that given assessments were carried out internally, HSACRE should be able to obtain information on the results of RE from schools.