RE Northern Ireland

Banbridge Academy have become the first school in Northern Ireland to achieve a Quality Mark in Religious Education! Many congratulations are due to Warren Brown (HoD) and Sarah Hassard who richly deserve recognition for their excellent work. Raymond Pollock (Principal), Warren Brown (Head of RE), Sarah Hassard (Teacher of RE) Speaking of why they applied for the award, Warren stated: "We decided to take part in the process as our school is one which recognises the value of self evaluation – it allowed our department to identify what we are doing well. Our focus in school recently has been the development of a Teaching and Learning Policy – so it related very well to this." The REQM is an established award, developed by the RE Council , which recognises high performing RE departments.  It is designed to assist those who wish to engage in a formal self-improvement process but, importantly, it also provides an opportunity to showcase high quality teaching and learnin

Those who have been teaching for any length of time will know that curriculum reform is a regular feature of the educational world and it will be of little surprise for most RE teachers in Northern Ireland to learn that the content and assessment arrangements for GCSE and A level are currently under review, with new qualifications expected to be in place for 2016.  But as well as top-down reform, teachers in RE have a reasonable degree of flexibility to make adjustments in their provision of the subject from year to year. Indeed, from talking to RE teachers in different schools across Northern Ireland in recent years, I have had a sense that quite a few departments have been altering their provision for Key Stage 4 pupils - some changing exam boards and others changing their module choices - and so I was interested to investigate further in order to discover the extent of the changes over the last four years. Figures published by the  Joint Council for Qualifications  (JCQ) give the

Among a number of infamous comments that Belfast-based Pastor, James McConnell, made about Muslims in a sermon at his Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle last month, was the statement: 'People say there may be some good Muslims in Britain - that may be so - but I don't trust them!' Subsequently, the Pastor was given support by the First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, who said he wouldn't trust Muslims who fully supported Sharia law; neither would he trust them for spiritual guidance, but he would 'trust them to go down to the shops' for him. Following wide-spread condemnation of his comments as inflammatory and irresponsible, the First Minister has apologised to local Muslim representatives, but across social media a good deal of others have sprung to the defence of Peter Robinson and Pastor McConnell trumpeting their right of free speech and the right of individuals to make religious truth-claims in public fora. Certainly, there is a need to main