More than half of England’s schools are failing to provide good religious education according to a new Ofsted report which suggests it is being “squeezed out” by other subjects, writes Paul Wilkinson.
The study, based on inspections of 185 community schools – those not attached to a particular faith – found that six out of 10 were not realising the subject’s full potential and many children were leaving school with “scant subject knowledge and understanding”. It concluded that while there have been some improvements in the last decade, many religious education (RE) lessons are still failing to help pupils explore fundamental questions of religion and belief.
It also criticised both Government and schools for failing to pay proper attention to the subject while head teachers blamed the Government’s new English Baccalaureate and short-course GCSEs as reasons for the changes they were making to the subject. The EBacc is a performance measure that does not include religious studies among its core subjects.
The inspectors found many RE lessons were almost devoid of religion, with subjects including healthy living, charity work, visits to old people’s homes, practising pantomimes and “literacy work on topics such as feelings” taking priority.
RE is compulsory in all state schools but is not part of the national curriculum.
The Catholic Education Service pointed out that Catholic schools are inspected under a different framework, but welcomed the review. In a statement, it said: “The health of religious education
nationally is a concern to all providers of religious education.”
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