England and Wales may end religious instruction in schools

expectationlost

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/wales-poised-to-scrap-teaching-of-religious-education-in-schools-10435880.html

the indo.uk headline is slighlty confusing it was religious education and then later religious instruction

The report recommended that religious instruction should be banned from schools and become the preserve of Sunday schools, madrassas and the home - and that legislation compelling schools to hold a daily act of “predominantly Christian” worship should be scrapped.Instead, the duo argue that the emphasis should shift away from merely religious education with pupils being taught religious and moral education as well.

can't find anything on their website http://gov.wales/topics/educationandskills/?lang=en seems to be in response
to a report by Education Secretary Charles Clarke and religious education experts Professor Linda Woodhead http://faithdebates.org.uk/blog/time-to-treat-re-like-any-other-subject-john-reader-religious-education/ via http://faithdebates.org.uk/

not radical proposals int that report

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/15/scrap-compulsory-worship-in-schools-former-education-secretary-charles-clarke

Peregrinus

Interesting, but the suggestion that "England and Wales may end religious instruction in schools" might be a bit overblown. The report by "Education Secretary Charles Clarke and religious education experts Professor Linda Woodhead" is in fact a report by former Education Secretary Charles Clarke, who ceased to be Education Secretary eleven years ago and who lost his seat in Parliament five years ago. He's a good bloke, but he has no official position and he is not close either to the present government (he was a Labour politician) or to recent Labour leadership (he's on the left of the party).

Linda Woodhead isn't a "religious education expert"; her field is the sociology of religion.

Woodhead and Clarke are colleagues in the Dept of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. I don't think their reports have any official significance; they are a voluntary contribution to public discussion.

Finally, although as expectationlost says the newspaper coverage is less than satisfactory, I don't think that the proposal is to "end religious instruction" in schools. The report calls for an end to the compulsory daily act of worship, but no ban (it should be up to school governors to decide whether a school is to celebrate acts of worship) and it calls for the existing "religious education" course to be restructured as a "religious and moral education" course.

Of perhaps particular interest in the Irish context is a further recommendation that "more needs to be done to develop fairer admissions procedures for faith schools".

expectationlost

there a distinction betw what welsh ed said and report says waiting for transcription
http://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2015/aug/04/wales-new-plans-for-re-classes-with-less-religion
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-33789420

Peregrinus

expectationlost wrote: »

there a distinction betw what welsh ed said and report says waiting for transcription
http://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2015/aug/04/wales-new-plans-for-re-classes-with-less-religion
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-33789420

True. There's actually two different events going on here.

1. The Clarke/Woodhead report, discussed in my earlier post.

2. The comments of the Welsh Education and Skills Minister, Huw Lewis, to revise the "Religious Education" course so that it becomes a "Religion, Philosophy and Ethics" course.

While there's some parallel between the Clark/Woodhead proposal to turn RE into "Religious and Moral Education" and the Lewis proposal to turn RE into ""Religion, Philosophy and Ethics", they are different proposals made for different countries. Education is a devolved matter in Wales. If the Clark/Woodhead proposals are implemented in England, that won't affect Wales, except to the extent that the Welsh government likes what is done in England and decides to copy it. What Lewis seems to be saying now has some parallels with Clark/Woodhead, but it's not the same proposal. Signficantly, religious stakeholders in the UK have generally welcomed Clark/Woodhead, but from the BBC report you link to religious stakeholdes in Wales seem a lot warier of Lewis.

expectationlost

cant find transcript http://www.assembly.wales/en/bus-home/Pages/bus-home.aspx not up yet

expectationlost

expectationlost wrote: »

cant find transcript http://www.assembly.wales/en/bus-home/Pages/bus-home.aspx not up yet

oh it was discussed the 15th just just slow to reach news

Simon ThomasBywgraffiadBiography
Thank you, Presiding Officer. Minister, could you tell the Assembly what the Welsh Government is doing to combat extremism in schools and other educational settings?
Diolch i chi, Lywydd. Weinidog, a allech ddweud wrth y Cynulliad beth y mae Llywodraeth Cymru yn ei wneud i fynd i’r afael ag eithafiaeth mewn ysgolion a lleoliadau addysgol eraill?

Senedd.tv Fideo Video
14:38
Huw LewisBywgraffiadBiography
Well, I think Simon Thomas touches upon a very important issue that should concern us all in terms of how schools approach these profoundly important issues. The Welsh Government does have a national community cohesion delivery plan, which helps to enhance a better understanding of communities and enables services to respond to the changing needs of communities. And the Welsh Government funds eight regional community cohesion co-ordinators to provide all-Wales coverage to support the development of work through that delivery plan.




I would, though, if you’ll allow me, take the opportunity to also mention this afternoon my intent that schools individually, and as a whole, need to rise to the challenge of community cohesion, and I believe that Professor Graham Donaldson’s four purposes, one of which is that children should be ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world, demands that we take action. And, in that regard, I’d like to take the opportunity to announce this afternoon that I believe we need to transform our current religious education curriculum. My contention would be that we rename the RE curriculum and transform it into the religion, philosophy and ethics element of the curriculum, where there is an explicit commitment to allowing children to ponder ideas around ethics and citizenship and what it means to be a citizen of a free country.

recedite

I don't foresee any real changes to the British education system today or tomorrow. These various utterances are just symptomatic of the general unease in Britain with the amount of people leaving to join IS in former Syria/Iraq.
As the Welsh minister said, he wants kids to be taught "what it means to be a citizen of a free country".

I don't have much sympathy for their views really, for 2 reasons;

1. These same kind of people are usually quite happy to have govt. funded faith schools, so long as they are Christian. But now they are peeved that Muslims have taken advantage of the system to set up their own faith schools, and have "taken over" some others (operation Trojan Horse).

2. A huge number of French citizens have joined IS too, despite being educated in secular schools. So I think these guys may be barking up the wrong tree.

I still think publicly funded schools should be secular, but I don't think having secular schools would spell the end of religious fundamentalism. Nevertheless, I expect this sort of political rhetoric to increase over the coming years, both here and in the UK.

Hotblack Desiato

recedite wrote: »

I still think publicly funded schools should be secular, but I don't think having secular schools would spell the end of religious fundamentalism.

Secular schooling is necessary but not sufficient.