RE Northern Ireland

**Please note that the original article has been amended with new information about legislation governing the timetabling of Religious Education** During the last year, a number of RE teachers have asked me about the legal position of RE in the curriculum in Northern Ireland in relation to the amount of time allocated to the subject at Key Stages 3 and 4 - is there a minimum time requirement? Inevitably, the reason for the question is that their RE department is losing out in the battle over curriculum time. One of the teachers I spoke with was facing a fifty percent reduction in time at Key Stage 3 to a single 30 minute period per week. There is a legal obligation on schools to deliver RE (see the Education (NI) Order 1986 ) but, until recently, I was not aware of any clear directive on the issue of timetabling. Thankfully, however, in response t o an earlier version of this post,  Bill Latimer (RE Adviser with the Belfast Board) has made the situation somewhat clearer. He note

'Catholic Schools opening Their Doors to Teachers of Any Faith'* was the front page headline in The Irish News earlier this month. The paper was reporting on a change of policy by the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) to relax the requirement for teachers in Catholic primary schools in Northern Ireland to undertake the Catholic Education Certificate in Religious Education.  On first reading, the headline seemed to suggest a radical change from the current policy, where applicants to Catholic primary and nursery schools are required to undertake the RE certificate.  If the requirement were removed then this would surely be a new era for Catholic education for it would change the religious nurture role of the teacher in a Catholic primary classroom and the principle that faith-development is fully intertwined with all other aspects of the education of children in the school. The exact situation can be understood more clearly, however, by reading a  circular  to p

Following extensive consultation and investigation an All Party Parliamentary Group at Westminster has produced a report on the current status of Religious Education in England. The group, chaired by Stephen Lloyd (a Lib-Dem MP for Eastbourne and Willingdon), were particularly interested in uncovering the nature and extent of recent changes in the staffing of RE in schools, the opportunities for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for RE teachers and the provision of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in RE. They discovered: about half of primary teachers and trainee teachers lack confidence in teaching RE around half of class teachers in Primary schools hand over the teaching of RE to others - in a quarter of cases to teaching assistants at secondary level, over 50% of teachers of RE have no qualification or expertise in the subject RE teachers have inadequate access to CPD In trying to understand the reasons for this situation Stephen Lloyd noted, 'our group we

Photography by Marketing & Creative Services, Queen's University RE teachers from across Northern Ireland gathered with representatives from the Department of Education, the Education and Training Inspectorate and Teacher Education providers on Wed 13th February to discuss the theme of sharing Religious Education.  The conference was organised by the Sharing Education Programme  (SEP) which has been working with schools in Northern Ireland for six years to facilitate multiple forms of sharing in education across school boundaries.  Contributors included Prof Jim Conroy (University of Glasgow , Dr Jones Irwin (St Patrick's College, Drumcondra), Mr John Keast (The RE Council of England and Wales) and Ms Jo Malone (The Tony Blair Faith Foundation) as well as local contributors Dr Norman Richardson (Stranmillis University College), Mrs Francine Magill (Malone College), Mr David Thompson (Forge Integrated  Primary School), Prof Tony Gallagher (Queen's University) an