Policy and practice in religious education within faith and community schools

• Main Author: King, Carolyn
• Published: Lancaster University 2011
• Subjects: 296.6
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.654542

As Britain's population has changed, so have the requirements within the religious education curriculum. The diversified nature of British citizens places a huge responsibility on the government to ensure that each individual is treated equally. The population reflects a rich diversity of culture, tradition, ethnic origin, and also religion and beliefs. Diversity of religion within the education system plays a major role in cultivating an appreciation, understanding and acceptance of differences, and also encourages young people to participate in inter-faith dialogue. In 2004 the government introduced a non-statutory National Framework Agreement for Religious Education (NFRE). The main aims of the NFRE are to ensure that a pluralistic perspective is introduced into the curriculum so that different faiths are represented, to promote the value of community cohesion, and to standardise the curriculum content and assessment practices across England and Wales. The thesis originally set out to explore specifically the response of a sample of faithbased and community schools to the NFRE. However, I discovered early within the study that the sample schools did not use the NFRE at all as curriculum guidance for religious studies. Therefore, the theoretical aspirations of the NFRE are examined against the practical application of religious education within the schools. This thesis presents a commentary on religious education (RE) within a sample of faith-based and community schools in Lancashire. The study seeks to assess if the sample schools have aligned their RE curriculum to that proposed within the NFRE or not, and if not why not. There is an evaluation of how and why the NFRE policy has been developed at national level and how the information has been disseminated to regional level and understood at local level. Saunders (1986a) 'staircase' model has been employed to analyse this communication from national to regional to local level. The study shows a complete lack of communication in the case of the schools in the sample. However, interview responses from participants in all three schools demonstrate that the principles of the NFRE were being applied even in the absence of explicit knowledge of the document's existence. Although the faith-based schools in the study were not bound by the NFRE requirements, it was clear that they were at least as compliant as, if not more compliant than, the community school with the demands of the policy.