A survey by the Religious Education Council of England and Wales has found that while 80 per cent of young people thought studying RE could help to promote understanding of different beliefs, only 25 per cent said they remembered RE lessons being ‘interesting and challenging’.
The BHA, a member of the RE Council, welcomed the findings as a contribution to the debate around the future of RE and as further evidence that RE needs reform if it is to fulfil its potential. The BHA also stated its concern at the fact that young people who were not religious still report lower levels of engagement with the subject.
BHA chief executive Andrew Copson commented:
‘These findings confirm what the BHA has said for many years – that young people see the value in good education about beliefs and values, but that they rarely find the subject as stimulating or broad as it could be. The subject stands in need of urgent reform if it is to fulfil its potential.
‘RE should be brought within the national curriculum as an impartial, academically rigorous subject covering a range of religious and non-religious beliefs, while offering pupils the opportunity to refine their own developing worldviews. The current system whereby most schools follow a syllabus set by local committees, while religious schools deliver a curriculum that does not have to abide by any specific statutory guidelines, means that pupils are too often denied the opportunity to really engage with the subject.’
‘These peculiar arrangements, which are unlike those for any other subject, frequently mean RE is delivered by teachers who are unsupported and unsure what they are trying to achieve. With the launch of a new national curriculum next year, the government has a unique opportunity to finally realise RE’s full potential – we and many others will be urging them to take it.’
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For further information or comment please contact Andrew Copson andrew@humanists.uk or 020 3675 0959.
The British Humanist Association (BHA) has worked in RE for over five decades and promotes a national syllabus of fair, balanced and objective education about religious and non-religious beliefs and values as the entitlement of every child.