Hampshire County Council Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education Meeting

Apologies were received from Jeff Williams, Julie Kelly, Sushma Sahajpal, Gill Heron, Jon Hamer, Rhian Jones, Yasmeen Hussain, Sheikh Fazle Abbas Datoo, Alasdair Richardson, Rhiannon Love, Rachel Jackson, Harjinder Virdee, Chris Hughes, Sue Bowen and Maureen Barnes

Members were mindful that where they believed they had a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in any matter considered at the meeting they must declare that interest at the time of the relevant debate and, having regard to the circumstances described in Part 3 Paragraph 1.5 of the County Council's Members' Code of Conduct, leave the meeting while the matter was discussed, save for exercising any right to speak in accordance with Paragraph 1.6 of the Code. Furthermore Members were mindful that where they believed they had a Personal interest in a matter being considered at the meeting they considered whether such interest should be declared, and having regard to Part 5, Paragraph 4 of the Code, considered whether it was appropriate to leave the meeting whilst the matter was discussed, save for exercising any right to speak in accordance with the Code.

Elizabeth Jenkerson noted that she was a judge for the Westhill Awards which gives grants to SACREs.

The minutes of the previous meeting on 9 November 2021 were confirmed as an accurate record.  It was noted that a list of current SACRE members and the legal basis for SACRE’s monitoring of Collective Worship had been included with these minutes at SACRE’s request.

There were no deputations.

The Chairman noted that on 10 February local and national faith leaders joined the Chief Rabbi at the unveiling of the statue of Licoricia of Winchester by the Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire, in the absence of the Prince of Wales who was unable to attend.  A key purpose of the project is to educate about England’s and in particular, Winchester’s important but forgotten medieval Jewish Community. Hampshire’s inspector/adviser was involved in supporting the preparation of related educational materials.

SACRE’s Jewish representative, Danny Habel, a member of the Licoricia of Winchester board of trustees spoke a few words about the project.  Around the base of the statue are the words ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ in Hebrew and English, which is intended to promote religious tolerance and the value of diversity in the community. He noted that she was also a role model for women as a twice-widowed single mother, business woman, and educated, at a time when most people were not.

He said he would be willing to lead a walk on the Winchester Medieval Jewish Trail for SACRE Members and offered to something similar for any schools who were interested.

SACRE received a report from Patricia Hannam, the County Inspector/Adviser on behalf of the Director of Children’s Services, updating them regarding developments in relation to Living Difference IV (item 6 in the Minute Book).

There had been a good response to the two virtual launch conferences that had taken place on 30 November 2021 and 12 January 2022 and a further half day virtual event was scheduled for the summer term.  There had also been three well-attended online sessions of governor training.

Members were informed that a small amendment – the removal of the words ‘and the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted)’ – would be made to page 3 of the Agreed Syllabus on the advice of Hampshire’s legal team.  This would not impact the syllabus in any way.

RESOLVED:

That SACRE noted the report.

SACRE received a report from Patricia Hannam, County Inspector/Adviser and Justine Ball, Primary Adviser, on behalf of the Director of Children’s Services, on the discussions of the Monitoring Group at its meeting on 25 January 2022 (item 7 in the Minute Book).

The advisers took Members through the report drawing attention to items of note and gave opportunities to raise questions.

It was noted that Church of England schools had received guidance and training in using Living Difference IV with their ‘Understanding Christianity’ resource. This advice was now available to all Church of England schools on the Hampshire RE Moodle.

The results of the recent withdrawal survey had shown that there was no reason for concern. Very few children (about 0.09% of the children in the schools that had responded to the survey) had been withdrawn from all or parts of RE and Collective Worship; it was mainly children from Jehovah’s Witness and Plymouth Brethren families.

In-person primary monitoring visits have restarted and SACRE members who wished to go on a visit were asked to get in contact.

The Monitoring Group used to scrutinise Ofsted reports but now they rarely mention RE and Collective Worship and then with no detail.  The advisers were to meet with the Ofsted HMI for RE to explain Hampshire’s new syllabus Living Difference IV.  However, it was noted by Rob Sanders who attends Ofsted feedback meetings in diocesan schools, that RE had been mentioned at these with increasing frequency but it did not get put in the final reports. 

There would be a joint primary-secondary teachers’ conference in October as the syllabus review had highlighted a gap between primary and secondary practice in RE. The new syllabus had sought to address this by the ‘golden threads’ which follow through all phases.  It was mentioned that all the current teaching packs were being reviewed and updated in the light of Living Difference IV.

It was highlighted that there were local and national concerns about the low number of applications for RE PGCE courses which had implications for new RE teachers in schools. Both Chichester and Southampton Universities no longer had courses, Winchester’s was still there; the next nearest ones were Reading, Bristol and London.  The removal of the bursary for RE courses could well have affected applications.  Teacher vacancies in Hampshire were, however, low as people seem to be staying put.

RESOLVED:

That SACRE noted the Monitoring Group report.

SACRE received a report from Patricia Hannam, the County Inspector/Adviser, on  behalf of the Director of Children’s Services informing Members about a request for a determination which had been received (item 8 in the Minute Book).

She began by explaining what a determination was and that this was the first one that SACRE had ever received.  It was noted that the panel that had met to discuss the determination had felt the need to request further information from the school in order to make a fully informed decision and was now awaiting this before reconvening.  It was expected that the panel’s final decision would be brought to the June meeting for SACRE’s approval.

As a result of the request and the panel meeting it had been realised that the current Determination Procedure document would need some amendment to ensure that it was clearer what information a panel would expect to see in an application. The current panel would be involved in formulating a draft revision of the Procedure which would be brought to the June SACRE meeting for approval.

RESOLVED:

That SACRE noted the report.

SACRE received a verbal report from Patricia Hannam, the County Inspector/Advisor, on behalf of the Director of Children’s Services on key national RE matters.

Members were informed of the NASACRE Conference on 23 May in Birmingham and were invited to express an interest in attending.  The three key speakers would be Richard Kueh, Ofsted Lead Inspector for RE, David Hampshire former NASACRE Chair, and Ed Pawson, Vice-Chair of the REC.

Termly newsletters are published by NASACRE which Members were encouraged to read.  NASACRE training webinars were also available for all members; details of these were sent out to Members by the clerk. It was proposed and agreed that next year SACRE would pay the annual fee for these training webinars as it would be more cost effective.

The South-West SACRE’s Conference on 28 February 2022 was attended by three members, Chris Robinson, Elizabeth Jenkerson and Sushma Sahajpal.

Chris Robinson spoke about the keynote speech given by Stephen Pett, a national RE adviser with RE Today. He spoke about the framework project he was involved with to produce a follow on from the 2018 Commission of RE report developing the direction it set out.

Phase one would be the publication of a draft handbook in May 2022 at the REC AGM which would explain the rationale, give a revised national statement of entitlement and practical steps for syllabus development.  Phases two and three would be the development of a framework to apply the handbook in different contexts with exemplar units being trialled followed by a revision of the handbook.  Implementation would follow in 2024. 

He posed the question of whether religion and world views were totally separate things.  Everybody had a world view in their own context of family and community and at different stages of life, and religion may or may not be part of it. He suggested six points for reflection:  firstly, that this would be a long-term change; secondly, religion and world views were not lists and there should be a shift from a focus on knowledge to interpretation. Thirdly, everyone had a world view; there should be an understanding of ‘unbelief’ and a recognition that not all with faith have the same depth or engagement with their faith. Fourth, context and developments should be taken into account; the language used should change from religion to people (e.g. Islam to Muslim) and how they conduct their lives; what is orthodox and who determines this and how can change over time. Fifthly, should the ‘lived reality’ be highlighted, the relationship between organised and individual world views/religions. Finally, in considering the criteria for the selection of content for a national curriculum he questioned whether school RE leaders were best placed to lead the changes.

Elizabeth Jenkerson spoke about the two workshops she had attended on ‘being in a SACRE leadership team’ and ‘how SACRE’s can contribute to diversity and inclusion’.  She highlighted the differing needs of urban and rural area SACREs and the varying amount of support that SACREs have available to them.  In relation to diversity and inclusion Justine Ball mentioned the findings of her dissertation on world views and the teaching of Jesus. She had recorded an overview of her research, which was available on the Culham St Gabriel’s website under December 2021 Research of the Month. It is available together with a recorded “In Conversation with Dr Wendy Dossett here : In Conversation…. - Culham St Gabriel's (cstg.org.uk).It was noted that one of the appendices in Living Difference IV dealt with the place of religion in world views.

SACRE received a verbal report from Justine Ball, the Primary Inspector/Adviser, on the activities of the South Central SACRE Hub.

It was explained that the Hub was a group of SACREs from along the south coast that meet virtually once a term and any SACRE member was welcome to attend. The last meeting had been on 17 January 2022 and the next was 26 April.

The meetings regularly discussed what each SACRE was doing and any issues, Collective Worship, RE monitoring, GCSEs and syllabus reviews.

Rob Sanders, an attendee at these meetings and one of SACRE’s Church of England representatives, explained a diocesan project he had shared with the Hub.  The aim of this project was to increase school’s awareness of diversity in the books, artwork and imagery shared with children and to use resources that highlight such issues with children. One such resource was “An Angel just like me”…..which the author Maya Hoffman has recorded for the Diocese to use. The story had been about a young black girl cannot find an image of a black angel; the topic explored the lack of diversity through the story.

The Council received a verbal report from Patricia Hannam, the County Inspector/Adviser on the status of SACRE’s Youth Voice.

She indicated that Youth Voice had unfortunately not met for two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but she hoped to meet with the teachers of the six schools that had previously attended in the summer with a view to starting up again in the autumn term. 

With primary Youth Voice, Justine Ball, the primary adviser, said she was working on a project with AREIAC to record children talking about RE.  She intended to share some of this at a future SACRE meeting.

No other business was raised.

The date of the next meeting was confirmed as 28 June 2022 in the Ashburton Hall, Hampshire County Council, Winchester. 

At 1.30pm, prior to the main meeting at 2.00pm, there would be a presentation from two Hampshire teachers currently on the national RE Leadership Programme.