Coordinating Religious Education Across the Primary School

Derek Bastide

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781135715205
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Provides support for RE Coordinators who are trying to get religious education properly established in their primary schools. The text focuses upon issues of planning, implementing and resourcing and aims to be a user-friendly guide.

Part one	The role of the religious education coordinator
	Chapter 1 The role of the RE coordinator
	Chapter 2 Religious education coordinators speak

Chapter 1

The role of the RE coordinator

The role of any subject coordinator, whatever the subject, is largely about influencing other people. The ideal coordinator is an enthusiastic model to colleagues; is knowledgeable about the curriculum area concerned; keeps up to date with developments at a local and national level; listens to and acknowledges colleagues' concerns; is prepared to start from the point colleagues are at and to work from these; is prepared to work collaboratively with colleagues and to offer support where it is needed; to be a critical friend (both supporting and challenging) and above all to have a vision for the subject in the school.

Coordinating religious education

An RE coordinator needs to have:

• a clear understanding of the legal requirements which affect RE in schools and of developments in RE both locally and nationally;
• an understanding of both the aims and purposes of RE in the education of children as laid out in the local agreed syllabus and of how these might be implemented in the school curriculum;
• a developing knowledge and understanding of the nature of religion and of the principal religious traditions in Great Britain;
• an interest in and enthusiasm for religious education;
• the opportunity to provide in their own teaching a demonstration of good practice in the teaching of RE.

These should therefore enable the RE coordinator to:

• have a vision of how RE might be developed in the coordinator's particular school;
• lead whole school planning for the continuing development of RE in the school;
• spread enthusiasm among colleagues;
• provide support and advice to colleagues;
• plan and acquire resources necessary to support the teaching of RE in the school including books, artefacts, videos and posters;
• coordinate liaison with outside contacts, especially with speakers from religious traditions and with places of worship;
• monitor RE in the school;
• coordinate assessment and record-keeping in the school.

This list will provide the basis for the discussions in this book and a glance at the contents should show how this is being tackled.

Although the coordination of RE in a primary school should be no different from the coordination of any subject — and should be done in the same way as far as possible — it is only realistic to recognise that there are differences and these differences arise from a mixture of causes, some legal, some emotional and some hard to categorise.

The fact that RE, although it is in the basic curriculum and therefore required by law to be taught in school, is not part of the National Curriculum places it in a different category from the other subjects and busy teachers trying to fit all they have to do into the week are inclined to see it as more expendable. It is also possible for a teacher to opt out of the teaching of RE on the grounds of conscience — and that, again, places it in a different category from the National Curriculum subjects for which there is no such clause.

Over and above this, it is important to recognise that teachers' own personal experiences and attitudes are powerful factors. For a number of teachers religion is a difficult subject and, inevitably, unhappy experiences of religion especially in childhood affect their attitude to teaching RE. This largely affects the teaching of Christianity and incidentally an interesting feature of the current situation is that many teachers feel easier teaching about other religions than they do about teaching Christianity. Some others who are religiously committed are tempted to see RE as an opportunity for evangelisation.

Other teachers, too, misunderstand the aims of RE and imagine that they are expected to seek commitment in their pupils; which, of course, is difficult if they do not show the same commitment.

These are areas which the RE coordinator has to tackle if the subject is to be established securely in a school and they do often require patience and tact. Above all, there must be a willingness to discuss carefully and calmly what is expected of teachers so that they can see the need to separate their own beliefs and commitments from the task of helping children to begin to understand religions.

In addition to this there is widespread lack of confidence because of the broadening of the content of RE to include a range of religious traditions. This should be a less serious problem. It has arisen with all the National Curriculum subjects as they came on stream and, through INSET activities, through research and through practice, teachers have developed the necessary skills and knowledge. This should happen, too, with RE and will be a major responsibility of the RE coordinator but, provided there is good support and adequate information available, this should soon be overcome.

It is not the intention here to deter anyone from embarking upon the role of RE Coordinator but simply to recognise that there are issues which will arise in a number of schools and the coordinator will need to deal with them. There are many, many cases of teachers initially suspicious about the teaching of RE, a suspicion based upon a false or inadequate understanding of the aims of RE, who, once the light dawned, became effective and enthusiastic teachers of the subject to their pupils. Such a change of view is doubly gratifying to the RE coordinator.

Chapter 2

RE coordinators speak

In 1995–96 a research project was undertaken at the University of Brighton into the work of RE coordinators in primary schools. The project had a number of focuses. One was the separate interviewing of the RE coordinator and of a classteacher teaching RE to his/her class in more than forty primary schools. These were schools in which RE was judged to be satisfactory or better and, because of financial constraints, were all situated in five education authorities in the South-east of England. Findings from this are reflected in this book as a whole. Another focus of the project was to gain a broader picture through the use of a questionnaire. In this focus, eight English education authorities were selected representing, north/south, rural/urban, multicultural/(virtually) monocultural and prosperous/economically depressed. From each of these education authorities fifty schools were selected at random. Voluntary aided schools were excluded as they are not required to follow an agreed syllabus. Of the 400 questionnaires, addressed to the school's RE Coordinator and with a stamped addressed envelope for reply, 219 (54.75 per cent) were returned. This was undertaken in May/June 1996.

What follows here are some of the responses to aspects of the questionnaire, namely:

• Who are the RE coordinators?
  What academic qualifications do they have in RE?
  Why were they appointed to the post?
  Do they have other roles in the school?
  Are they happy in their role?
• The satisfactions of the job
• Problems encountered
• Personal needs
• Future need in school

These responses have vivified many of the issues which RE coordinators have found in the course of their work and have, therefore, contributed to the treatment of issues in this book.

Who are the RE coordinators!

A developing feature of the past few years in primary schools has been the identification and appointment of teachers on a staff to coordinate and lead curriculum subjects and this has taken an even greater importance since the Education Reform Act of 1988. This process is not without its difficulties, two notable ones being the special position of small schools and the school with a very stable staff. In this sample, 13 per cent of the schools had less than 100 pupils and 40 per cent in all had less than 200 pupils. In one school, which has only 42 pupils and two teachers, the headteacher herself takes responsibility for RE along with six other subjects! In established school staffs, the allocation of subject leader roles is usually by negotiation and discussion as it is highly unlikely that a school would have a qualified specialist for each subject. On a stable staff it is only rarely that there is a teacher vacancy and then it is only possible to recruit a subject specialist if one applies. All these issues are relevant to the appointment of RE coordinators but they are also relevant to many of the other subjects on the curriculum. School management groups, in order to secure a subject spread...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Series editor's preface
• Introduction
• Part one The role of the religious education coordinator
• Chapter 1 The role of the RE coordinator
• Chapter 2 RE coordinators speak
• Part two What the RE coordinator needs to know
• Chapter 3 RE, the 1988 Education Reform Act and beyond
• Chapter 4 The aims of religious education
• Part three Writing a school policy for RE
• Chapter 5 Working with colleagues
• Chapter 6 Religion and the agreed syllabus
• Chapter 7 Writing a religious education policy
• Part four Developing religious education in the school
• Chapter 8 Planning the religious education curriculum
• Chapter 9 Monitoring and evaluating religious education
• Chapter 10 Assessment, recording, reporting and accountability
• Part five Useful resources
• Chapter 11 Books, artefacts, videos and ICT
• Chapter 12 Visits and visitors
• Chapter 13 Some useful addresses
• Index