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  (...

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...

**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...

'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...

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 Gallag...