Bridging faith and education in our community

Here’s a quiz question for you – there is only one area of our school curriculum for which all local authorities have a statutory responsibility to oversee.

Is it Maths, English or PE?

Well, perhaps you already knew – it is none of the above, but it is Religious Education, and we have a statutory duty to provide our schools with a syllabus for RE, and to support its delivery and their collective worship. Local authorities do this through a committee called SACRE – the Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education. Part of the work of SACREs is to monitor the effectiveness and appropriateness of the RE syllabus, and this is revised every five years.

Every SACRE has membership drawn from four distinct groups:

• Faith and worldviews reflecting the principal traditions of the area
• Specifically Christian representatives
• Teachers - nominated by their unions
• Elected councillors.

Additional representatives of other groups with a particular expertise can also be co-opted. As you can imagine, SACRE meetings are lively and provide great opportunities to share thoughts and test opinions. I have been chairing SACRE since I became lead member for Education and Children’s Services in 2018, and I am immensely proud of our work.

So what have we been doing recently? Well, July has been a bumper month in our work with both secondary and primary schools.

2 July was FaithDirect Day at Orleans Park School. This brought together teams from seven of our local secondary schools to meet faith and worldview leaders from our main traditions, for a morning of individual table discussions, and an afternoon panel when the leaders answered questions from participants and shared their own views on the topics raised. Thank you Orleans Park – you hosted us splendidly.

On 10 July Heathfield Junior School became the first of our Richmond primary schools to gain the new joint Kingston and Richmond SACRE Award for Quality Religious Education Provision. This is a free assessment for schools to help ensure excellence in their RE teaching. I was delighted to present this at their wonderful RE assembly, in the presence of the Mayor and ward councillors for the school.

And what will we be doing in September? We will once more be setting in motion the process of revising the RE Agreed Syllabus, as the five years since we last considered the revisions to the syllabus have flown by.

If you would like to learn more about our SACRE, you can read our Annual Reports. You are also welcome to observe our meetings. Just contact our clerk, Joanne Tutt.

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