Success! RE to be added to the National Curriculum

Humanists UK has welcomed a ‘landmark’ recommendation from the Government’s Curriculum and Assessment Review to add Religious Education (RE) to the National Curriculum in England after a thorough review of its content to be conducted by an expert group in the coming months. Humanists UK has advocated for this for many decades and today hailed it as a major step towards fair, balanced, and high-quality education in religious and non-religious worldviews.

As part of its submission to the Curriculum and Assessment Review’s call for evidence, Humanists UK called for RE to be brought into the National Curriculum so that the subject is taught in a ‘consistent, broad, and balanced manner’. Throughout the review process, Humanists UK engaged with the panel as it considered its recommendations.

In parallel, the Review also recommends that the Government review and revise outdated national guidance on RE in England ‘to establish whether beneficial changes to subject content could be made in the short term that do not pre-empt the wider work the review is recommending’. Current national guidance was last revised in 2010, before the 2015 High Court Fox judgment established that humanism must be given equal weight in the subject, and Humanists UK has called for its revision ever since then.

Humanists UK’s Chief Executive Andrew Copson said:

‘Bringing RE into the National Curriculum will be a landmark moment for fairness and high standards in a vital subject. For decades, Humanists UK has argued that every young person deserves a rigorous and balanced education about religions and humanism wherever they go to school. 

‘Today’s recommendation reflects that case and paves the way for consistent content, better training, and higher-quality lessons for all pupils. We look forward to working with the UK Government to make this reform a reality.

‘We also welcome the sensible recommendation that the Government should lose no time in establishing what changes it can make right now without the need for future legislation. There is much that can be done to make the existing subject more inclusive and we will be engaging with the Department for Education in that endeavour.’

The recommendations follow recent Government acknowledgement of the importance of treating humanism on an equal footing to major world religions in RE. In response to a question on that issue in the House of Lords, the minister told peers that it was ‘fundamental’ that worldviews were included, and the inclusion of humanism in the RE curriculum ‘needs addressing’.

The final report notes that ‘The 2018 Commission on RE concluded that the structures and systems supporting RE have not kept pace with changes in the wider education sector, including… world in which children and young people encounter a broader range of world views, including, for example, Humanism.’ The analysis of the call for evidence says ‘some respondents felt that the Religious Education (RE) curriculum should take a broader approach that could better reflect the multicultural make-up of the UK, covering a wider range of religions, as well as ensuring non-religious views are represented.’

It is recommended that ‘the Government invites the sector to establish an independent task and finish group made up of representatives from faith bodies, secular groups [e.g. Humanists UK] and experts from the teaching and wider education sector, to develop a draft RE curriculum. This group should be consultative, continuing the work of the Review in liaising with relevant external parties (including faith groups and communities, secular groups and faith and non-faith schools) and should seek to build on the REC’s National Content Standard. The group should also consider whether there would be benefit in changing the name of Religious Education.’