Feb. 02 2024
Source Page: Regarding Humza Yousaf's meeting with Pakistan Consulate: FOI reviewFound: freedom and confirming that no religious body will be compelled to solemnise same -sex marriages
Asked by: Baroness Sherlock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Ofsted Annual Report 2022/23: education, children’s services and skills, published on 23 November 2023, what plans they have to implement the recommendation contained in that report to clarify expectations about the level of religious education provision in schools.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Religious Education (RE) is an important part of a school’s curriculum and can contribute to a young person’s personal, social and academic development. When taught well, the subject develops children’s knowledge of British values and traditions, helps them to better understand those of other countries, and refines pupils’ ability to construct well-informed, balanced, and structured arguments. This is why it remains a compulsory subject in all state-funded schools in England for each pupil up to the age of 18.
Whilst the department read Ofsted’s recommendations with interest, the department believes that RE curricula should continue to be designed at a local level, whether that is through locally agreed syllabuses or by individual schools and academy trusts developing their own curricula. It will remain for individual schools to plan, organise, and deliver their curriculum, so that local demographics can be appropriately accounted for.
In maintained schools without a religious designation, Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education (SACRE) should monitor the provision and quality of RE taught according to its agreed syllabus, together with the overall effectiveness of the syllabus.
Academies are accountable for the quality of their curricular provision, including for RE. They can choose to adopt a locally agreed syllabus or develop its own, as long as it meets the requirements of a locally agreed syllabus.
The department does, however, welcome the work that the Religious Education Council (REC) has done to assist curriculum developers by publishing its National Content Standard for RE in England. This is not in itself a curriculum but, without specifying precisely the content that schools should teach, provides a non-statutory benchmark against which syllabus providers and others could choose to inform and evaluate their work.
To support teachers, and to ensure high standards and consistency in RE teaching, resources will be procured by Oak National Academy during the second tranche of its work. Oak will work closely with the sector and utilise sector experience when producing new materials for RE. This will ensure that high-quality lessons are available nationwide, benefitting both teachers and pupils, should schools opt to use them. Oak RE resources will be available for teaching from autumn 2024, with full packages expected to be available by autumn 2025.
Asked by: Baroness Sherlock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Ofsted Annual Report 2022/23: education, children’s services and skills, published on 23 November 2023, what plans they have to implement the recommendation contained in that report to ensure curriculum publishers identify clearly what pupils will learn and when, in relation to religious education.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Religious Education (RE) is an important part of a school’s curriculum and can contribute to a young person’s personal, social and academic development. When taught well, the subject develops children’s knowledge of British values and traditions, helps them to better understand those of other countries, and refines pupils’ ability to construct well-informed, balanced, and structured arguments. This is why it remains a compulsory subject in all state-funded schools in England for each pupil up to the age of 18.
Whilst the department read Ofsted’s recommendations with interest, the department believes that RE curricula should continue to be designed at a local level, whether that is through locally agreed syllabuses or by individual schools and academy trusts developing their own curricula. It will remain for individual schools to plan, organise, and deliver their curriculum, so that local demographics can be appropriately accounted for.
In maintained schools without a religious designation, Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education (SACRE) should monitor the provision and quality of RE taught according to its agreed syllabus, together with the overall effectiveness of the syllabus.
Academies are accountable for the quality of their curricular provision, including for RE. They can choose to adopt a locally agreed syllabus or develop its own, as long as it meets the requirements of a locally agreed syllabus.
The department does, however, welcome the work that the Religious Education Council (REC) has done to assist curriculum developers by publishing its National Content Standard for RE in England. This is not in itself a curriculum but, without specifying precisely the content that schools should teach, provides a non-statutory benchmark against which syllabus providers and others could choose to inform and evaluate their work.
To support teachers, and to ensure high standards and consistency in RE teaching, resources will be procured by Oak National Academy during the second tranche of its work. Oak will work closely with the sector and utilise sector experience when producing new materials for RE. This will ensure that high-quality lessons are available nationwide, benefitting both teachers and pupils, should schools opt to use them. Oak RE resources will be available for teaching from autumn 2024, with full packages expected to be available by autumn 2025.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has issued recent guidance to schools on the proportion of their funding that should be allocated to the teaching of (a) religious education and (b) other subjects.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
This year, core school funding will total over £57.7 billion, which is an increase of £3.9 billion compared to the 2022/23 financial year. All schools have the freedom to choose how to spend their core funding according to their own unique circumstances and priorities, providing that all expenditure ultimately benefits their students. The department does not provide specific funding for religious education; it is for schools to decide the allocation of resources across different subject areas.
Mentions:
1: Baroness Barran (Con - Life peer) While some higher education providers have seen decreases in arts and humanities staff, academic staff - Speech Link
2: Lord Bishop of Sheffield (Bshp - Bishops) My Lords, almost every armed conflict in the world at present has a religious dimension, making informed - Speech Link
3: Baroness Barran (Con - Life peer) I do not have the specific figures for religious studies on their own, but historical, philosophical - Speech Link
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of Chinese Communist Party re-education classes for Catholic priests in the Inner Mongolia region.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK Government continues to monitor the persecution of religious groups in China, including Christians. The freedom to practice, change or share one's faith or belief without discrimination is a human right that all people should enjoy.
The space for religious freedom in China continues to deteriorate. For example, recent new Measures on the Administration of Religious Activity Venues legislation includes widespread restrictions on religious practice such as requirements for priests to conduct sermons promoting core socialist values and Xi Jinping Thought.
The British government works with international organisations and networks to promote and protect freedom of religion or belief for all where it is threatened. This includes work through the UN, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance.
Ban schools from requiring students to take Religious Education GCSE
- Final Signatures: 38
Some schools require their students to take Religious Education as a GCSE, even though this is not a compulsory subject for Key Stage 4. We want this to be banned.
Found: Not everyone wants to study Religious Education as a GCSE and students shouldn't be forced to study a
Written Evidence Mar. 20 2024
Inquiry: Integrated EducationFound: IED0059 - Integrated Education Integrated AlumNI Written Evidence
Mentions:
1: Gillian Keegan (Con - Chichester) High-quality multi-academy trusts are key to driving up education standards for pupils, teachers and - Speech Link
Asked by: Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government why the Department for Education maintains named individuals' religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability information from Higher Education equality monitoring data, rather than retaining the information as anonymised statistics.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department does not directly collect information from higher education institutions concerning the religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of students. However, the department does receive these variables from Jisc (and previously the Higher Education Statistics Authority) as part of the student records that they share with the department.
The information is held at a named level to enable this data to effectively function as a longitudinal research source, which can be used to compare educational pathways with other (non-educational) outcomes later in life. This will provide an evidence base against which society can evaluate and monitor the impact of education and training on outcomes and support government decision-making to improve services and ensure equality of opportunity for all irrespective of background or circumstances.
While individual identifiers are retained by the department for matching purposes, at all times the department will minimise the processing of, and access to, instant or meaningful identifiers. Access to named data within the department is restricted to a small number of data professionals with responsibility for matching this data with other sources and creating pseudonymised, or aggregated, versions of the data which are subsequently used for research and statistics.