Agenda and minutes

The meeting welcomed Lesley Prior, the new Professional Advisor to SACRE.

The meeting agreed to consider Membership of SACRE after Item 4. The minute for this issue is recorded under ‘Any Other Business’ below.

Apologies for absence were received from Liz Wolverson, Esther Fenty, Michelle Chalibamba, Lynne Trigg and Abdul Quadir.

To approve and sign the minutes of the SACRE meeting held on 22^nd October 2013.

The minutes of the meeting held on 22^nd October 2013 were approved and signed as a correct record.

Matters arising

Members asked for a copy of the final version of the Annual Report for 2012-13.

ACTION: Committee Services/Professional Advisor to SACRE

There were no declarations of interest.

Lesley Prior, the new Professional Adviser to SACRE, introduced herself to the Committee and explained her professional background.  

She said that she had a number of different roles. She worked as a lecturer in RE at Roehampton University. She also worked for the London Diocesan Board for Schools and served as Chair of the National Association of SACREs. She worked with 5 other London boroughs in addition to Camden.

Tracy Edwards explained that she had been appointed as Specialist Leader in Education for RE. She had also met with Lesley Prior to discuss issues relating to RE in Camden.

She thought that it would be beneficial to have a one-day conference for Sixth Formers. Those in post-16 education were required to have Religious Education and a conference involving schools from around the borough would be an effective way to deliver this and give the students the chance for an interesting debate.

There was a discussion about philosophy for children. It was suggested that there could be training offered for Camden teachers to enable them to deliver this to their pupils. 

It was noted that a lot of teachers lacked confidence in teaching RE and that one of the roles of SACRE should be to guide schools and teachers in terms of boosting their knowledge and confidence when handling the issue.

It was suggested that links could be forged with cultural institutions in the borough such as Hampstead Theatre and the Jewish Museum.

The Chair said he was pleased with the event that had been held at the LSE. There were good speakers and there was a presence from faith schools and the UCL Academy. However, he was a little bit concerned at the relatively low level of attendance.

In terms of raising the profile of SACRE and of RE issues, members felt it was important to have information available on a website. It had also been suggested by Jean Lang that there could be an RE item on the agenda at one of the regular Headteachers’ meetings.

Lesley Prior said that completed questionnaires had been received from 4 primary schools, 3 secondary schools and 1 special school. To increase the completion rate, it was suggested that this could be left on the table at one of the Headteachers’ meetings to encourage them to fill it in.

An issue that emerged from the questionnaire was that schools did not feel confident in delivering RE. Only one school that replied had an RE specialist, and the others had a range of teachers who only taught RE for a few periods per week. Schools worried about planning and resources for RE.

There was discussion about the proposed Sixth Form Conference on RE. It was suggested that 16-19 year olds doing vocational qualifications could be invited along. A large number of students studied BTechs in Health and Social Care and they might be interested in considering spiritual and moral issues.

Ms Prior mentioned that Hounslow had held successful Sixth Form RE conferences which had linked together religion with other subjects; such as religion and science, religion and music and religion and history.

The NASACRE AGM would be on 22^nd May. There would be a number of speakers, including Stephen Lloyd MP, who chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Group on RE.

The fee would be likely to be £90. The Chair said he would liaise with Jean Lang as to whether there was funding to send Camden delegates.

To note that the next meeting will be on 17^th June 2014 at 5.30pm.

The next meeting would be held on 17^th June 2014.

Lesley said that Determination requests would be submitted to that meeting. It was therefore important that school visits be scheduled to those schools. She said that she would produce a list of what visitors should look for when doing school visits as part of the Determination process.

There was concern about the lack of attendance by some members of SACRE. It was felt that there needed to be more representation of Eastern religions, as the Hindu representative had not attended and there was a vacancy for a Sikh representative.

Given the demographic composition of the borough, it was also felt that there needed to be a second Muslim representative.

There was also a discussion about what would be the most suitable day or time for meetings. Alice Fuller said that a later start would be better for her, but others said that teachers often preferred to be able to come to the meetings straight after work and so an earlier start was better for them. In terms of the day of the week for meetings, Councillor Fulbrook commented that any day would be problematic for some councillors given the range of meetings which they attended. However, Tuesdays avoided clashes with party meetings, Cabinet meetings or Development Control meetings.

It was suggested that for the next academic year meetings could alternate between different days (such as one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday).