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The Board of Education of the General Synod of the Church of England strongly urges the Government to ensure that at least 5% of curriculum time in all schools in available for the teaching of religious education. This percentage would not include the time allocated to collective school worship.
The Board of Education is also of the view that two-thirds (66%) of the RE teaching programme in schools should be allocated to the teaching of Christianity. There are schools with a significant number of pupils from other faiths and the Board recognizes that such schools, though few in number, have a particular concern. Even in these schools, however, the Board would expect at least 50% of the programme time available to RE to be spent on teaching about Christianity. Equally there may be some schools which for their own purposes may wish to teach up to 75% of the time on Christianity. This would be acceptable to the Board, but in general the Working Party believes a figure of 66% in most schools to be reasonable. The remaining time would be sufficient for one or two other religions at the appropriate Key Stage to be taught properly and at sufficient depth to be treated with the respect and intellectual integrity they require.
The Board's view is that within the given time limits available for RE it is unrealistic to expect pupils to give the same amount of attention to all the principal religions in Great Britain. It recommends that pupils should be expected to study no more than three religions (one of which would be Christianity) in depth at any Key Stage.
The Board is most concerned that the central beliefs and practices of Christianity should be taught to all pupils in all schools. This booklet includes a general and helpful guide to those central beliefs and practices.
The Board urges the Department for Education to ensure that religious education receives the same resources and support as are available to the other subjects in the Basic Curriculum. This would include bursaries to support teachers for further training or for non-specialist teachers to acquire re-training in RE, together with direct and clear guidance to school governors of the necessity of ensuring that RE has sufficient curriculum time and adequate resources.
The General Synod Board of Education identifies six areas for study which should run through the years of compulsory schooling:
2.1 The Bible
2.2 Jesus
2.3 The Church
2.4 Christian Festivals
2.5 Worship
2.6 Belief, Faith and Values
In some syllabuses other terms will be preferred, such as 'Sacraments', 'Ethics', 'Community', 'God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit'. These would obviously be acceptable as long as they cover what the Board believes must be identified as the central core of Christianity for the purposes of teaching pupils aged from 5 to 16 years in the state-maintained system of education.
Care should be taken to avoid creating a syllabus which is akin to a theology degree; the aim is to produce a syllabus for teaching about Christianity which can be taught to pupils of average ability. There will be opportunities in every school to support the less gifted pupil and to encourage the more able.
It may be important, in the primary years, to retain some flexibility in the requirements for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. Some young children come to school knowing nothing about religion at all or, conversely, knowing only about the non-Christian faith of their parents and community; it may therefore take some time to introduce them to the beliefs and practices of Christianity.
The teaching of the Bible and the importance of the life of Jesus are to be regarded as seminal. In the primary years pupils would be expected to move, for example, from being able to recognise the Easter and Christmas stories and knowing that the Bible is a special book for Christians to being able to demonstrate an awareness of how the Bible grew as well as knowing and understanding some key Biblical passages from the Old and New Testaments.
When teaching from the Bible, whether it be from the Old or New Testaments, and for use at any Key Stage, the following may be helpful for teachers preparing work at each Key Stage but particularly at Key Stages 1 and 2:
Similarly, the pupil moving through the Key Stages would process from being able to give an example of a story Jesus told to being able to demonstrate familiarity with events and teaching in the life of Jesus in (for example) the Gospel of St Mark.
At Key Stages 3 and 4 the 'six-column model' should continue but there will be a number of alternatives which would include new areas of work. The six areas should still be covered but there is no reason why programmes of study in RE should not include, for example, Religious Language, Religious and Science, Authority and Revelation, Religious Experience, Religion and Culture, Religion and the Creative Arts. This would allow an alternative thematic approach while a study of the basic material continued.
Some of the six areas could be expected to take more pupil-time at some ages and Key Stages than others. Festivals, for example may take less time during Key Stages 3 and 4 than at Key Stages 1 and 2, while Belief, Faith and Values may need more time at Key Stages 3 and 4 than at Key Sages 1 and 2. This flexibility would depend upon the teaching strategies of the teacher and the recommendations within the Agreed Syllabus
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