Baselining Religious Education in Northern Ireland

Development planning and target setting have, by now, become firmly established aspects of school management processes. And with the development planning process comes the recognition that, to plan effectively for where you're going, you must first know where you are starting from. The importance of 'baselining' is well-known and involves recognising existing strengths and identifying areas for improvement. Doing so means that plans are likely to be more achievable and, because they emerge out of a detailed understanding of current practice, they are realistic and more effective.

In terms of our understanding of practice in religious education in Northern Ireland, however, the baseline evidence remains limited and fragmentary. Perhaps the most obvious example being that the subject remains formally exempt from the ETI inspection process. Where churches exercise their right to inspect, no reports are put in the public domain. Where schools request ETI inspectors to observe religious education classes, no subject-specific comments are included in their reports, and it is twenty years since the ETI published any document relating to standards or expectations for the subject.

"to plan effectively for where you're going, you must first know where you are starting from"

In other UK regions, challenges for religious education are acknowledged and, importantly, suggestions for improvement are generated as a result. In the absence of any health-check strategy for the subject in Northern Ireland, it is important that researchers continue to add to our understanding and clarify current issues in relation to the subject. In that regard, work carried out by academics in Ulster University is to be welcomed as it provides some helpful overviews of the place of religion in schools in Northern Ireland based on evidence from empirical work. At the time of writing, the Transforming Education project includes reports dealing with religious education generally and the Catholic Certificate in Religious Education in particular. Hopefully more will be added. The reports by Stephen Roulston, Matt Milliken and Sally Cook raise important questions such as, What kind of religious education is appropriate for post-conflict Northern Ireland? and If there is to be compulsory RE who should determine the content of the RE syllabus?

In addition they offer some interesting recommendations around issues concerning the role of religion and religious education in initial teacher education, teacher employment and classroom practice. What is clear from their work is that despite minor shifts, the overall position of religion in education in Northern Ireland has remained largely unchanged since the middle of the twentieth century. This raises questions about the extent to which the system is capable of accommodating differences in religion and belief in the current century. Indeed, the authors ruminate on the barriers created by current legislation for minority religious communities who might wish to have alternative forms of religious schooling. Under current legislation it would seem that if a Muslim school were established in Northern Ireland, it would have to accommodate a daily act of worship and religious education based upon the Christian Holy Scriptures, as is required of all grant-maintained schools.

Given the significant influence that churches continue to have over religious education, it seems reasonable to ask those with control such as the the Catholic Bishops or the Transferors' Representative Council (The Presbyterian Church, Methodist Church and Church of Ireland) to bring forward fresh ideas for how they see legislation and practice evolving to address some of the challenges identified by the Transforming Education team. In legislation and the curriculum for RE in Northern Ireland, significant change is needed (see some suggestions in a previous post). Returning to the theme of baselining, we know that good baselines in education are informed by a wide range of voices. In the case of schools these generally include the voices of parents, teachers and of young people.  So, while new thinking from the churches should be encouraged, a wider range of voices also needs to be heard.

With the myriad priorities facing education in the coming post-pandemic months, it's unlikely we can expect much change in an area that has been neglected for so long. In the meantime researchers should continue their work, though they too need to reflect on the range of voices they have consulted. With a few notable exceptions including work on Collective Worship (see a previous post), the views of young people are largely absent from research in religious education in Northern Ireland. Hopefully the Transforming Education team and other researchers will find more ways to listen to and report on the perspectives of young people, teachers and communities in future months.