A New Settlement - Just some thoughts.

This is my first ever blog so please be kind.  I have just read the report from Charles Clarke and Linda Woodhead and on the whole there are some excellent recommendations that will hopefullly lead to some good debate about the future of RE in schools.

The whole issue of what is taught is a critical one for RE teachers like myself and there are many excellent blogs and comments on the current failing of schools to provide good quality, challenging RE.  I do feel that this has been overstated by certain members of the RE community, it may be that current GCSE RE specs are not as challenging as other Humanities subjects but I'm not convinced that there is the huge gulf that one might think reading some comments made on this subject.  This might be something I blog about another time.  I do support the recommendation of a nationally - agreed syllabus and think this could be one of the most important developments for RE in many years and potentially could have the biggest impact.  However, a word of warning:  Do we want it to be a central government controlled syllabus or something more in the spirit of the 2004 national framework?  I'd prefer the later.

There are some very interesting questions that arise from the report and I am just raising two that jumped out on my first reading, I'm sure there will be plenty of other questions that arise in the coming weeks.

1. Will faith schools be willing to adopt a nationally agreed syllabus?  My own school is a Church of England secondary school and I don't think this would be an issue adopting such a syllabus as our local diocesan supports the LAS anyway.  However, it may well be more problematic for Catholic Schools as outlined in this blog by Andy Lewis 
2. Ofsted, Ofsted, Ofsted!  All through this report is what seems to be a reliance on Ofsted enforcing any changes.  I'm not sure Ofsted are currently capable or would be particularly keen on taking on this responsibility.  The latest things coming out of the big O is that for Good schools there will be more regular but significantly reduced inspections only lasting a day.  How could they check a schools RE provision in such a short space of time when they have all that lovely data to crunch?  So how else would any changes be enforced or implemented?  How would schools be made to give equal status to RE as with History or Geography?  

It certainly is an intersting time to be in the RE game that's for sure.