Bishop: ‘RE seen as a scary nuisance’

A NEW POLL suggests that nearly half of those surveyed want state schools to be entirely secular but the Bishop of Oxford has said Government ministers regard Religious Education as a ‘scary nuisance’.

The YouGov poll was conducted on behalf of Prospect magazine and shows 48 per cent agreeing that the Government should make all schools secular with 38 per cent opposed and 14 per cent saying they did not know.

The poll included other questions on education and showed overwhelming support for the Government’s return to a traditional teaching of history to include the main events of British history and teaching children to be proud of Britain’s past.

The letter of the Rt Rev John Pritchard was addressed to other bishops after the Bishop had met with David Laws, the Lib Dem schools minister, and was leaked to the Daily Telegraph.

In his letter Bishop Pritchard wrote: “The future of RE is still a major concern. Not only is it not in the EBacc, but teacher training places have nearly halved and a spiral of decline seems inevitable. The latest survey shows secondary schools not filling vacancies and reducing time for RE, and some primary schools giving responsibility to teaching assistants.

“We’ll keep up the pressure as I’m sure you will too, but it’s clear that Government has no real interest in RE because they see it as a scary nuisance, and its protected status as a guarantee that all is well. It isn’t.”

Support for Bishop Pritchard’s pessimistic analysis comes from a survey of 2,500 teachers by the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers. Among respondents 13 per cent reported a decline in provision for RE in their schools as a consequence of EBacc.

Bishop Pritchard said that the exclusion of RE from the certificate had caused a ‘diminution’ of the subject in the minds of head teachers and that he feared a ‘general decline’ in the teaching of religion.