RE 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 obse...

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...

According to the authors of a recent study the answer to the question, 'Does Religious Education Work?', is 'A heavily qualified yes.' They go on to say: 'In general religious education offers students a positive experience and a pedagogy that focuses on developing their discursive abilities and makes a contribution to multicultural awareness.'  The report is the result of a three-year investigation carried out by the University of Glasgow, King's College London and Queen's University Belfast (where a one-day seminar on the report was held recently).  Using qualitative and quantitative methods, researchers investigated the practices and outcomes of religious education in 24 schools across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. While the report regards religious education generally positively it also makes clear that, in the schools it investigated, the subject 'did not, in the main, make students religiously literate' and that it suffered from...

The School of Education and School of Law at Queen's University Belfast have published the findings of research into the experience of children of minority belief who opt-out from religious education in schools in Northern Ireland. The core aim of the research was 'to examine the opt-out clause through the perspective of young people (13-18 years) of minority belief and to assess its suitablility as a mechanism to protect religious liberty in a diverse society.' The findings show that many young people, parents, teachers and principals have little awareness of the legal situation in relation to opting-out from RE. Although, the report also notes that while the opt-out clause offered some protection for the rights of those who exercised it, it did not in itself guarantee respect for the beliefs of young people. Those who do opt-out are treated in a wide variety of ways, from being expected to stay in religious education classes to being removed to an unsupervised room. The r...