Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department have made of the quality of training for primary teachers in religious education; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Providing the best possible initial teacher training (ITT) is the focus of the Department’s drive to improve teaching standards. In order to be awarded qualified teacher status (QTS), trainees must demonstrate that they have met the Teachers’ Standards, which includes a requirement that they demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge. Ofsted is responsible for testing the quality of teacher training and at their most recent inspection, 99% of all teacher training providers were rated good or outstanding.
The amount of time that primary trainees spend in training on each of the subjects in the national curriculum is not specified by the Government. It is for ITT providers to use their professional judgement to determine the content and structure of courses, but they must be designed so that trainees can demonstrate that they meet all the required standards at the appropriate level by the end of their training. This includes religious education.
In July 2016, the Department published a ‘framework of core content for initial teacher training’, further guidance which states that ‘trainees must be conversant with a range of effective subject-specific pedagogical approaches’. The framework also outlines providers’ responsibility to audit trainees’ subject knowledge early in their training and make provision to ensure that trainees have sufficient subject knowledge to satisfy the standard by the end of their training.
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that all schools provide pupils with opportunities to develop specific and age-appropriate knowledge and understanding of religions as part of promoting mutual respect and tolerance of people with different faiths and beliefs; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Nick Gibb
All state funded schools are required by legislation or by their funding agreements to teach religious education (RE) to all registered pupils aged 5 to 18 years. Teaching RE is also part of schools’ activity to meet their legal duty to promote young people’s spiritual, moral and cultural development.
Each area is required to have a locally agreed syllabus for RE that maintained schools without a religious designation must follow. This is monitored by each area’s Standing Advisory Council for RE (SACRE). As part of school inspections from September 2019, as set out in Ofsted’s published School Inspection Handbook, inspectors will take account of the religious education taught as part of assessing the quality of education provided by the school. It is not Ofsted’s role to inspect denominational religious education in faith schools as part of its inspections. This provision is inspected separately under section 48 of the Education Act 2005.
The requirement for state funded schools to teach RE did not change with the introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc).
Many schools choose to teach RE in key stage 4 through offering Religious Studies GCSEs, which are not included in the EBacc. Information on entries to the RE GCSE can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/key-stage-4-and-multi-academy-trust-performance-2018-revised.