Agenda item

The Chairman provided a brief overview of the responses to the questionnaire sent to primary schools and advised that they reflected the recent Ofsted report's findings concerning lack of training provided to RE teachers. He noted that it was the role of HSACRE to provide support in this area and to ensure that RE teaching was of a high quality throughout the Borough. This had become an increasingly important area as the education support previously provided by the Local Authority was significantly depleted.

As SACREs had increasingly less influence over the teaching of RE in secondary schools, the decision had been taken to focus the questionnaire on primary schools only.

Members discussed the responses to the questionnaire and the following headline points were noted:

§  Members raised concerns that only 24 responses had been received from 78 requests. The Chairman advised that he would be promoting the questionnaire further at the forthcoming meeting of headteachers with a view to increasing the number of responses.

§  It was concerning that no specialist RE teachers at primary schools had been identified and unqualified staff were being used in some cases. Furthermore, it was noted that the PGCE course taught at Brunel University had a total of only 4 hours training on the teaching of RE which was likely to lead to teachers not feeling confident in the subject.

§  Teachers seemed to be indicating that they wanted support for subject knowledge through training events. It was suggested that the expertise of local communities as well as numerous other agencies (such as the British Humanist Association) should be used to provide some of this support. However, the importance of teachers being equipped to teach RE themselves was stressed by members.

§  RE was not prioritised in many non-faith schools as it was not a major aspect of the Ofsted inspection framework. With an increasing focus on the attainment of 5 A-C grades, some schools were also opting not to teach RE and have pupils undertake only 5 subjects. This had implications on the amount of training and support that teachers would be provided in RE.

With regard to offering training and support, it was noted that the key challenge was communication as there was no existing network of primary RE teachers in place. However, work was being progressed to develop this network and bring people together to determine what support was required. Once a clearer idea of the need was identified, the aim would be to provide a full, self-sustaining offer of training to schools. HSACRE would not be able to provide free training meaning that a case would have to be made to schools to provide funding themselves.

It was agreed that engaging subject leaders and newly qualified teachers would be the priority areas in the first instance. Although it would be desirable to provide this training prior to the end of the current term, it was agreed that quality of the offer should be the focus and that plans should be developed for consideration at the meeting on 5 November 2014.

RESOLVED: That:

1.    The Chairman check the percentages relating to responses to question 2 and advise members of the outcome;

2.    The Chairman and Adviser develop plans for training to be offered to schools and report back to HSACRE at the meeting held on 5 November 2014; and

3.    The questionnaire responses be noted.