Why a reformed RE on the National Curriculum – inclusive of humanism – matters

Religious Education (RE) can, when taught well and reflecting the full diversity of beliefs in modern Britain, be one of the most transformative subjects a young person studies. That’s why the landmark recommendation of the Curriculum and Assessment Review to add RE to the National Curriculum is so important: it opens the door to a nationally consistent, high-quality entitlement for RE that includes humanism alongside religions. Humanists UK has long called for broad, balanced reform that reflects what young people actually believe and want to learn, and strongly welcomed this direction of travel.

Patchwork provision and inconsistent teaching

Presently, RE in England sits outside the National Curriculum and is developed on a local authority basis. This leads to a patchwork of locally determined syllabuses and variable classroom experiences. Ofsted’s 2024 subject report Deep and meaningful? listed these deep inconsistencies. The report found that too many pupils encountered a superficial ‘topics tour’ in the classroom and reported that teachers often lacked access to subject-specific professional development. As a result, misconceptions went unchallenged. A nationally developed syllabus will be high-quality and solve those problems.

Then there’s the place of humanism in those local syllabuses. Almost all now include humanism to some degree. Some include humanism equally to the major religions. But many do not, and some are entirely exclusive. This is despite the 2015 High Court Fox judgment which found that equal inclusion is required. This variability is bad for equality and bad for standards. Your postcode shouldn’t decide whether you get a rich education about religion and worldviews. A new National Curriculum subject should fix this problem.

It’s now apparent the Government gets it. Only a week before the Curriculum and Assessment Review published its final report, and in response to a question posed by All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group member Baroness Lorely Burt about the inclusion of humanism in RE, the Education Minister told the House of Lords:

‘It is absolutely fundamental that we have the full spectrum of views right across and they have equal respect within the curriculum. I look forward to taking these issues forward.’

This is a further step in the right direction and follows on from the 2023 High Court Bowen judgment which ruled that Kent County Council’s rejection of a humanist representative on Group A of its Standing Advisory Council on RE (SACRE) was unlawful. In response the Department for Education issued guidance to all local authorities stating ‘applications for Group A membership from persons who represent holders of non-religious beliefs should be considered in the same way as applications from those who represent holders of religious beliefs’.

Since then, Humanists UK has been supporting humanists to gain full membership of their local SACREs or SACs, and help shape RE syllabuses so they are inclusive of humanism. However, while there might still be a role for these local bodies, an RE inclusive of humanism on the National Curriculum is the only way to tackle this patchwork provision comprehensively.

What do young people and teachers want from RE?

‘We learn what the Pope thinks about something, and that’s fine. But what about other thinkers, such as Humanists?’ [Deep and Meaningful? (2024), para 73]

The Ofsted deep-dive also speaks to what young people value: substantive knowledge, clear progression, and meaningful engagement with questions of purpose, ethics, and identity. In their discussions with inspectors pupils said that they understood the importance of learning about a variety of religions and worldviews. However, they also told Ofsted they wanted a curriculum that reflected their experience of living in a complex world. In other words, they wanted those ‘deep and meaningful’ conversations to help them make sense of the world they are living in. These comments align with wider evidence about belief today: most young people in the UK now identify as non-religious, and they want RE that reflects their lives—covering humanism in a serious, systematic way. Despite this, the report found that only a third of curriculums inspected addressed the ‘complexity and variation in religious and non-religious traditions’. This, the report stated, ‘led to inaccurate representations’ of these.

Putting RE on the National Curriculum would go somewhere to fix this problem and raise standards everywhere. A national entitlement would make sure that all pupils encounter a carefully sequenced study of both religions and humanism, taught for knowledge and understanding, not indoctrination. It would also support better teacher training and resources, addressing the professional development gap Ofsted identified. The deep-dive found that there was a ‘profound misconception’ among some teachers that teaching RE in a neutral manner equated to teaching a non-religious worldview. As the report states, this is ‘simply not the case’. 

Of course, any national entitlement for RE should be matched by funding and resources to support the training of RE teachers to make sure the subject is being taught appropriately. The recent decision to scrap RE teacher training bursaries will make it harder to recruit and train the specialist teachers to deliver much-needed improvements.

An entitlement for all

When RE is well taught, the benefits ripple out: it builds mutual understanding, reduces prejudice, and strengthens social cohesion by helping students appreciate both the common ground and the real differences in how people see the world. Those are essential civic skills in a diverse, democratic society. But for that to be true RE needs to be taught in a consistent manner in every state-funded school regardless of its character. Presently most schools with a religious character can teach RE in line with their faith, and it is inspected by someone chosen by the governors (which invariably means the diocese or other religious group that runs the school). Rather than being the ‘most comprehensive RE in the country’, as it was recently described in the House of Lords, such faith-based RE is usually ‘confessional’ in nature, with the aim of instructing children in the doctrine and practices of a particular religion, rather than about different religions and humanism as an academic subject.

It is vitally important that if RE is placed on the National Curriculum that it is applied to state-funded schools with a religious character as much as it is to community schools with no religious character. There is no reason why these schools cannot provide supplementary religious instruction alongside a nationally determined RE to those pupils who want it, but for RE to fulfil its role in promoting social cohesion and mutual understanding among young people, a national entitlement must be provided to all.

Does RE on the National Curriculum leave it open to partisanship?

There might be some who fear that placing RE on the National Curriculum could leave it open to shifts in politics, with governments of different colours using it to promote a particular agenda. For example, what would a future Reform Government do with national RE? The short answer is this can happen regardless of whether RE is decided at a national or local level. Some councils have recently been won by Reform and this number is set to increase. 

The fact of the matter is that local determination creates a huge variability in quality and inclusion that is already a mess. The courts have already ruled that RE must be balanced and give equal weight to humanism but this hasn’t happened because of the headaches of the local system. 

What’s more, if a party opposed to including humanism gets into power, then they would struggle to remove it due to those legal precedents – unless the UK were to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, in which case we would have even more problems with a locally determined system, as well as with a national one.

The work of Humanists UK to reform RE

Humanists UK has worked for decades to make this vision a reality, not just through decades of campaigning but through the provision of free classroom resources and CPD through Understanding Humanism, training a network of school speakers, and supporting teachers and pupils with accurate, accessible materials on humanist ideas and ethics. We’ve also championed fair representation in local RE structures, helping secure humanist membership on many Standing Advisory Councils on RE across England and Wales following important legal clarification in the 2023 High Court Bowen judgment.

Humanists UK is also a proud member of coalitions and groups such as the Religious Education Council of England and Wales (REC), which brings together academic and professional associations specialising in religious education, as well as individual religious and belief organisations representative of the range of communities found nationally. The REC’s engagement not just with the Curriculum and Assessment Review, but with the wider agenda on a religion and worldviews approach to the subject shows a broad coalition ready to modernise RE so it serves every pupil. That consensus matters: it’s how we move from good intentions to classroom reality.

Conclusion: RE fit for modern society

By placing an inclusive RE on the National Curriculum, the Government can guarantee every child in England an academically rigorous, contemporary, and genuinely deep and meaningful education about religions and worldviews. This is good for young people as they develop critical thinking skills to help them navigate the world around them, good for the teaching profession who deserve to know that their work is both appreciated and supported, and good for promoting community cohesion – which we need now more than ever. We look forward to working with our partners and the UK Government to make this reform a reality.