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anising principle for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. ‘Being literate’ suggests that one is knowledgeable about religions and able to navigate the complexities of religious domains, which.
The Religious Education Council of England and Wales embraces a vision that every young person should experience an academically rigorous and personally inspiring education in religion and worldviews.
Should religion be taught as part of the compulsory curriculum in state-maintained schools? If so, what should the status, content, and purpose of that education be?
A report from Exeter University introduces the process of using Big Ideas in Religious Education (RE) as powerful tools for developing curriculum and assessment in the subject. Big Ideas have been developed across the curriculum over many years in other countries.
- Introduction
- The Education Inspection Framework and Re
- Developments in Re
- Re at Different Stages of Education
- Ambition For All
- Re and The Quality of Education Judgement Within The EIF
- Curriculum Progression
- Teaching The Curriculum
- Assessment
- Systems, Culture and Policies
In religious education (RE), pupils enter into a rich discourse about the religious and non-religious traditions that have shaped Great Britain and the world. REin primary and secondary schools enables pupils to take their place within a diverse multi-religious and multi-secular society. At its best, it is intellectually challenging and personally ...
Our education inspection framework (EIF) reflects the expectations of how RE is provided. All schools that are state-funded, including free schools and academies, are legally required to provide RE as part of their curriculum. All schools are required to teach RE to all pupils at all key stages (including sixth form), except for those withdrawn.[fo...
In RE, there are different issues that can affect quality of education. Ofsted’s previous report on RE in 2013, ‘Religious education: realising the potential’, stated that the structures that underpin the local determination of the RE curriculum have failed to keep pace with changes in the wider educational world.[footnote 5] The local determinatio...
Reception and primary years
As at secondary level, arrangements for RE in Reception and primary years are localised.[footnote 15] Most locally agreed syllabuses recommend spending the equivalent of approximately 60 minutes a week on RE at key stage 1 and about 75 minutes a week at key stage 2. Most RE provision in Reception would be integrated within the Reception curriculum, as opposed to a stand-alone subject (see, for example, the RE Council of England and Wales’s 2013 non-statutory framework).[footnote 16] However,...
Secondary years
As at primary level, the arrangements for RE at secondary level are localised. Most locally agreed syllabuses are constructed on the assumption that the amount of curriculum time given to RE is at or above 5%.[footnote 19] However, using unweighted school workforce census data, the 2017 ‘State of the nation’ report (see Appendix B) estimated that this threshold of curriculum time was only met in: 1. 62% of schools where the locally agreed syllabus applies (including VCschools) 2. 90% of other...
A high-quality curriculum is ambitious and designed to give all learners the knowledge they need to succeed in life. This is particularly important for the most disadvantaged and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). All pupils are entitled to be taught RE. Leaders and teachers may, of course, need to adapt the curriculum...
Within the EIF, there are 4 key judgements that sit underneath an overall judgement of effectiveness: quality of education; personal development; behaviour and attitudes; and leadership and management. There are a range of different ways RE operates in schools. For example, in some, RE is also used as a vehicle through which to deliver whole-school...
Curriculum progression and debates about knowledge in RE
The EIF considers the knowledge that pupils learn in the curriculum. As pupils journey through a planned and well-sequenced curriculum in primary and secondary schools, they will build these different types of knowledge as they ‘know more and remember more’ of the planned curriculum.[footnote 33] Our previous research mentions that these types of knowledge are not isolated; they sit within interconnected webs in long-term memory.[footnote 34]They will also differ between subjects. The types o...
Substantive content and concepts in RE
The substantive knowledge of RE includes the ‘substance’ of religious and non-religious traditions that primary and secondary level pupils study in the curriculum.[footnote 42]Substantive content includes: 1. different ways that people express religion and non-religion in their lives, including diverse lived experiences and the complexity of the fluid boundaries between different traditions[footnote 43] 2. knowledge about artefacts and texts associated with different religious and non-religio...
‘Ways of knowing’ in RE
‘Ways of knowing’ is about being scholarly in the way that substantive content and concepts are approached. It refers to the different ways that pupils learn how it is possible to explore that substantive knowledge. With only substantive (‘what to know’) knowledge, the RE curriculum would be incomplete because pupils also need to learn ‘how to know’ in RE.[footnote 96]At primary and secondary level, leaders and teachers might teach ‘ways of knowing’ by ensuring that pupils learn not only sele...
Pedagogical models in RE
This section on teaching the curriculum focuses on procedures, methods and strategies as aspects of teaching. Within the literature on RE, however, ‘pedagogy’ can have a range of meanings, some of which are all-encompassing: 1. some RE literature considers pedagogy to be a ‘model’ of teaching and learning, which includes subject aims, curriculum content and teaching methodology that draws on generic educational principles[footnote 162] 2. others consider pedagogy to mean the specific classroo...
Suitable procedures, methods and strategies in RE
At primary and secondary level, leaders and teachers decide how to teach specific content and topics in RE. These decisions about procedures, methods and strategies are part of curriculum implementation. Implementing the curriculum effectively involves considering the teaching methods that will enable pupils to know and remember the curriculum in the long term. If teachers do not consider this, the impact of the curriculum will be weak. Pertinent research into the cognitive science of learnin...
Types of assessment in RE
There is no clear picture from literature about the nature and function of assessment in RE, let alone a straightforward conception of what constitutes high-quality assessment. This is partly due to uncertainty about what exactly is being assessed in RE.[footnote 180] It has been claimed that this sort of confusion about the subject’s identity has been ‘at the start of a long chain’, culminating in, among many things, ‘unreliable assessment’.[footnote 181] As a starting point, it is useful to...
Assessing types of knowledge in RE
For assessments to be fit for purpose, leaders and teachers in primary and secondary schools need to be clear about what they are testing and why. They can then make decisions about the most appropriate format of assessment (type of task) and when best to do it. Composite assessment tasks are sometimes used in RE to establish whether pupils have learned the curriculum. These tasks do not separate out different types of RE knowledge and may assess more than one type of RE knowledge within the...
Relating assessment expectations to the RE curriculum
At primary and secondary level, the RE curriculum maps out the journey of what it means to ‘get better at RE’. This is what is meant by the phrase ‘the curriculum is the progression model’.[footnote 193] When leaders and teachers want to know whether pupils have made progress in RE, they are asking a summative question: have pupils learned and remembered the RE curriculum? But it is often the case, both in assessment design and in school practice, that curriculum and assessment are considered...
Prioritising RE in the school curriculum
All schools that are state-funded, including free schools and academies, are legally required to provide RE as part of their curriculum (see Appendix A). All schools are required to teach RE to all pupils at all key stages (including sixth form), except for those withdrawn.[footnote 202] The way in which school leaders structure and plan ways to fulfil these obligations in school is one indication of the quality of education in RE. How the RE curriculum is classified may be another indication...
Teacher education and professional development in RE
At primary and secondary level, pupils should be taught by teachers who have secure subject and curriculum knowledge, who foster pupils’ interest in the subject and who are equipped to address pupils’ misunderstandings.[footnote 209] Findings over the past few years suggest that RE is not fulfilling this ambition. Although schools cannot always control factors relating to the standards of RE teachers recruited to teach RE, school leaders’ actions can impact on the development and retention of...
Mar 20, 2018 · Should religion be taught as part of the compulsory curriculum in state-maintained schools? If so, what should the status, content, and purpose of that education be? Given the diversity of cultures and faiths that is characteristic of many modern nations, these questions are pressing ones.
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Religious Education (CORE, 2017) to provide a thorough review of the subject to be studied up to the age of 16 ‘to prepare pupils for modern life in Britain’. Its main recommendation was that the subject should be renamed as ‘Religion and World Views’, and would attach equal importance to the understanding of human-
