Best Practice

Religious education – the fight-back begins

One of the main casualties of education policy, including the EBacc, has been RE. But now the subject’s supporters have hit back, carrying out an 18-month review and producing a new curriculum framework to raise the status of RE. Teacher Kate Christopher

The religious education community first realised there was trouble ahead when in 2010 the subject was omitted from those classed as humanities within the English Baccalaureate. 

If RE, the history of human thought, was not seen as one of the humanities, something was seriously wrong.

Secondary schools all over the country responded to this omission by sidelining RE at GCSE. Courses were cut as students were steered towards EBacc subjects, while resources, time and funding for RE were similarly reduced. 

After the shock of omission from the EBacc, the threats on RE’s horizon multiplied further. The new school types forming under the coalition government – academies and free schools – would not be subject to locally agreed RE syllabuses, as has been the practice since 1988.

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