New framework for RE proposed

A new national curriculum framework for religious education, designed to improve the way the subject is taught, was proposed this week in a review by the RE Council of England and Wales.

It is intended to complement the Government’s National Curriculum Review, and build on the admission earlier this year from the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, that religious education had been an “unintended casualty” of recent curriculum reforms, as well as Parliamentary and Ofsted reports of significant concerns about the uneven quality of RE learning and teaching.

The council sees the framework as part of its strategic plan to enable RE to adjust to the major changes being made to education in England by the Coalition Government.

It acknowledges that although a legal requirement for teaching in schools, RE is not included in the national curriculum, and its framework cannot claim to be “an exhaustive or final description of the place, value and scope of RE in 2013”.

However, given the council’s membership of more than 60 national bodies representing all major faiths from Anglicans to Zoroastrians, the framework has almost universal support.

The council says its new framework will ensure that the new curriculum “embodies rigour and high standards and creates coherence in what is taught in schools, ensures that all children are taught essential knowledge in the key subject disciplines and gives teachers greater freedom to use their professionalism and expertise to help all children realise their potential”.

It also aims to promote high-quality RE, “that will inspire young people, provide a basis for developing locally agreed syllabuses and RE syllabuses for academies and free schools [and] support RE in schools with a religious character.”

The framework also “illustrates how pupils will develop increasing understanding of wide areas of RE subject knowledge, and how they can develop religious literacy, including investigating religions and worldviews through varied experiences, approaches and disciplines; reflecting on and expressing their own ideas and the ideas of others with increasing creativity and clarity”.