Religious education is being squeezed off the timetable
From The Economist:
LAST year in one large London school, all 200 pupils taking their GCSE exams—standard tests sat at age 16—were entered for a qualification in religious education (RE), and emerged with results as good as in the other humanities. Yet, according to a teacher there, the school has just announced that its GCSE course in RE will be scrapped and replaced with a one-hour class every fortnight.
More schools are smiting their RE lessons. Nearly 1,200 put forward no pupil for an RE qualification in 2014, five times as many as in 2010. Some cite increased pressure on the timetable from other subjects; the fact that RE does not count towards the “English Baccalaureate”, a newish measure for assessing schools, also reduces the incentive to offer it. Two reports by Ofsted, the education regulator, have criticised schools’ attitudes. The quality of the RE curriculum was rated “good” or better in fewer than two-fifths of secondary schools; teaching of Christianity was one of the weakest aspects, it said.
This represents a turnaround. For centuries the church ran most education in England, with the state getting involved only in the 19th century. In 1944 the government brought church schools into the state system and began funding them. In return, RE was made compulsory.
Since then, the RE syllabus has been set by local religious advisory councils. In 1988 a single national curriculum for schools was introduced, but RE, with its special status, was not included. Alone among school subjects, it is still set by those councils. This means that, in principle, there are 152 different RE syllabuses around England, though in practice many overlap. The subject is still obligatory until the age of 18, though in reality this requirement is ignored, or watered down.
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