Raising the RE game

ON EDUCATION

The row over university funding and the government?s plans for ?3,000 top-up tuition fees looks set to dominate political debate for months to come. But in the quieter corners of Sanctuary Buildings, headquarters of the Department for Education and Skills, a very different style of discussion is taking place ? the reform of Religious Education.

This is an unusual development.Religion is a topic which education secretaries normally avoid, a sleeping dog with a loud bark and a talent for divisive headlines. This particular dog was at its most savage in the late 1980s and early 1990s when, around the time of Kenneth Baker?s 1988 Education Reform Act, the Christian right led a highly effective campaign against multi-faith approaches to the subject, arousing hurt and anger from fellow believers as well as other faith groups. The atmosphere is now a good deal less turbulent but no one, least of all a Secretary of State, wants a return to that.

The problem facing the current secretary for education, Charles Clarke, is that RE has long been viewed as a second-class subject: by schools, by pupils and by RE teachers themselves. There is a serious shortage of qualified specialists, with too many lessons still taken by the woodwork or games teacher. The subject rarely commands respect from the senior management in a secondary school. Although compulsory by statute, it is not even on the national curriculum.

So Mr Clarke?s decision to draw up a national framework for the subject at both primary and secondary level ? a framework likely to be published at some point later this year ? has been widely welcomed, by professionals and churchmen alike. The framework would not be compulsory, but there are hopes that it will raise the game of the SACREs (Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education), the obscure groups who draw up RE syllabuses for schools in each local authority. It will also help raise the profile of a subject still too often associated with Sunday School instruction.

The current legislation, a badly worded muddle, is part of the problem. The law says that schools must ?take into account? all the principal religions of the country, yet Christianity must at the same time predominate. This was the result of a vigorous campaign by committed but somewhat hardline Conservative Christians including Baroness Caroline Cox in the House of Lords. More than a decade later, no one has satisfactorily determined what, in practice this means, or could reasonably mean.

The prospects are not entirely gloomy. For the first time, thousands of pupils are now gaining a qualification in RE, thanks to the availability of a ?short course GCSE? in the subject (effectively half a GCSE). A subject once treated as a doddle by the majority is apparently seen with new eyes.

But according to the RE teachers, the subject is still taught appallingly badly in a number of places. This tends to mean schools can get away with using an unqualified teacher, possibly resorting to a diet of old-fashioned Bible study. Or its polar opposite, a tedious listing of the feasts, festivals, signs and ceremonies of the main faith groups, a process often devoid of sympathy or understanding.

This is why a steering group representing professional interests and the main faith and denominational groupings has now convened, with government backing, to draw up an ideal model of the subject ? one that transmits some sense of why religious beliefs matter so much to so many millions. The Catholic Church is represented by Fr Joe Quigley from the Diocese of Birmingham and Sr Mary Jo Martin, principal education officer from the Portsmouth diocese.

The next step in the process, however, is problematic for the Church, and a reminder that religious education, and the bishops? right to determine the content of RE in their schools, remains an issue of huge sensitivity.

The other denominations, Anglicans and the Free Churches, are happy with the idea of going beyond a national ?framework?, to a statutory national ?syllabus? and so, it appears, is the education secretary. In fact he has told some denominations he will go as far as he can in that direction.

If the national framework fails to bring coherence and better teaching to the subject, a statutory syllabus seems quite likely. This would not be part of the national curriculum, but would still determine what is taught in state-funded schools. And here the Catholic bishops object, seeming to fear a threat to their autonomy ? although no other Churches share this sense of danger. There is as yet no suggestion that Catholic schools, which spend 10 per cent of their time on RE, should slavishly follow a national syllabus devised for the majority of schools which only spend 5 per cent.

The Catholic Education Service says a statutory syllabus would be both unneccessary and difficult to construct, bearing in mind ?the practicalities and sensitivities involved?. No one doubts the last point.