Proposed changes to religious education syllabus

Proposed changes to Religious Education syllabus

Thursday, July 19th, 2018

Proposed changes to the Religious Education (RE) syllabus have been met with outrage in the UK.

The Catholic Education Service (CES) and the Bishop with special responsibility for RE say they are “not happy” with a report calling for urgent reform of religion in schools in England and Wales.

The say it is “a direct attack on the Catholic Church” and “a fundamental attack on religious liberty.”

The report was launched at the House of Commons on Tuesday.

It recommends updating the laws governing religion in schools and suggests bringing them into line with Britain’s current religious and cultural environment. Most people in the UK say they have no religion.

The report suggests a national syllabus should be developed to “raise the academic standard of religious education” and stop schools regarding the good teaching of RE as “an irksome appendage to the rest of school life.”

It also recommends renaming RE to “Religion, Beliefs and Values.”

The CES says this will result in RE being taught as “an exclusively sociological subject” and will mean “the Anglican state dictating their version of Catholicism.”

“It will also strip the Bishops of their right to set the curriculum – it’s incredibly misguided,” a CES spokesperson says.

Bishop Marcus Stock, who is on the committee for education and formation with special responsibility for RE, says the recommendations are “unacceptable for two reasons.

“Firstly, that the State can impose a national RE curriculum, which would dictate what the Church is required to teach in Catholic schools.

“Secondly, the curriculum they suggest contains no theological content, which is at the core of Catholic RE.

“We accept there is a need to improve RE in all schools and Catholic teachers and academics have been actively contributing to this discussion,” he says.

The discussion has resulted in several suggestions that would work in the UK.

“The suggestions would allow all schools to choose between RE as a theological discipline and Religious Studies as a sociological discipline,” Stock says.

“Catholic schools are the most successful providers of religious education in the country. This is because we take it seriously as a rigorous, theological academic subject.”

One of the report’s authors, Professor Linda Woodhead, says more research is planned regarding the state of religion in schools.

She says the research will seek “the widest possible support for the needed changes amongst government and across the faith communities and other key constituencies.”

Another of the report’s authors, former home secretary Charles Clarke, says the understanding of other faiths builds more “tolerant” views.

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