A tin of tripe will always be a tin of tripe.

When I first read the Commission on RE 2018 Report, ‘Religion and Worldviews, the way forward’, I must admit, that I was a little disappointed. The report recommends changing the name to Religion and Worldviews and making all schools have to teach it under a national entitlement. That national entitlement should include teaching the complexity and diversity and plurality of religious (and non-religious) views that interact with each other and change dependent on location and time, in an academically challenging way. We should teach that beliefs, values and meaning and purpose influence the way that people live their lives and that ‘teaching must promote openness, respect for others, objectivity, scholarly accuracy and critical enquiry.’ (Clearly the report is much more detailed!) As I read it, I ticked off off each bullet point, recognising my curriculum. I have always had the great pleasure of working in schools that have specialist teachers, and I have fought hard (as a Head of Department) to ensure that RE has sufficient curriculum time, and is viewed highly by the school (getting good results is helpful). We have worked hard to create a curriculum that does what the report says and are proud of our curriculum sequencing and the challenge that students experience in lessons. Now, of course, that curriculum was not perfect (and never will be) but the core principles of what the report outlined were certainly there. And I thought all schools were like that. However, the report outlines that there are ‘too many schools’ where RE ‘is not good enough’ for all kinds of reasons that we all know but alarmingly I was really struck by the statistics that many schools don’t even offer the subject (in a 2016 study an 38.9% of schools without a religious character offer no RE at KS4! and in the same year, nearly 30% of primary schools that responded to a survey by Natre offer less than 45 minutes a week.) I was pretty horrified by this. I was also pretty horrified that RE wasn’t doing what the report suggested – for me – that had always been good RE.

But then when I looked at the recommendations, I cannot deny that I felt a little disappointed because changing the name alone would not matter – people have changed the name of our subject for as long as I have been teaching – and that hasn’t made a difference to the quality of what is taught. I worry that many will change the name and think that will make the difference. It won’t, it can’t, and it never has: Ethics; Philosophy and Ethics; Culture, Religion and Philosophy…. A tin of tripe is still a tin of tripe – even if you change the label.

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And changing what is taught, under the reports suggestion would be through a national entitlement. But this will only happen if there is the political will to do so (which there isn’t and is unlikely to be). So, I could see no movement happening. The quality of RE would remain poor in far too many schools because these things would not happen.

But that isn’t the end of the story. Whilst in 2018, I felt that the report could do very little, things have changed over the last three years. Yes, I am still a little worried about the name change distractor (for me good R&W is good RE). This could be damaging because if we get bogged down in that conversation, rather than focusing on ensuring that schools/teachers/students/parents know what great RE/RW looks like, we are wasting precious time and energy to make real change. And no, I don’t think that we will get the national entitlement – there are too many political interests (and lack of interests) to do so. However, I do know is that our subject is changing – I am no longer (as) jealous of my history colleagues when I look though my twitter feed, and I am seeing more really challenging and constructive conversations on Facebook groups about what really good RE looks like. Reading this in the fabulous Reforming RE book and ongoing blog really helped to move my thinking forward, as does on a practical note 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding RE Lessons. But it’s not reading these books (even ‘Making every RE lesson count‘) – that will make the difference. The most important thing, and one of the main drivers in writing #MERELC was that we are part of a debate, we are changing our amazing subject one conversation (or tweet, or blog, or podcast, or Facebook post) at a time. We are making the difference that @knowledgerich outlines as ‘the collective movement towards subject excellence and meaningful change must work from the basis of active teacher agency’. The conversations that we have… that is how we will change what is in the tin….

Thank you to everyone (I am not going to name anyone – because I will forget someone REALLY important!) who helps move that conversation forward. But thank you to everyone in #TeamRE. I am excited and hopeful for our future.