to be outraged that RE is a compulsory subject at GCSE level and History or a language aren't?

[seeker]

Well am I? I thought it was just my dd's very old fashioned school that insisted they study RE even if they aren't doing the exam, but I find out that it's a statutory requirement. So they can drop Modern Languages, History, Citizenship......but they have to do RE. And religious people say that thier faith doesn't impose on my life at all.

ANd I undersstand that it consits of reallly intersting discussion about issues of the day, and is really all about morality and philosophy and is mportant stuff, but why call it RE?

"I think the lessons should be compulsory, "

Why?

And you don't have to have a flair for languages to get a language GCSE - you just have to do the work!

Some schools call RE Ethics and Philisophy. Same subject, different name. Makes it more popular with pupils (and probably some parents too).
A MFL is compulsory at DDs (comprehensive)school.

I'm a secondary school teacher. The only subjects in England which are compulsory for students to try and gain a qualification (exam) in are Maths, English and Science ? in most schools this will be GCSEs but it can be other types of qualifications. There is a programme of study (PoS) for key stage 4 (basically years 10/11 GCSE years) which includes PE, RE, ICT, PSHE and citizenship. RE is a statutory subject but students do not have to take a qualification in it, although some schools will make it their policy that students take this as an exam as they are studying it anyway.

My understanding is that there are lots of options within the RE curriculum, but that the idea of it is that students will learn about the major aspects of all the major religions which should create understanding, tolerance and respect of others? beliefs whatever their own beliefs if that makes sense. The other subjects such as ICT and citizenship for example can be delivered through other subjects so for example a school would need to ensure that all students are having opportunities to use ICT in the ways set out in the ICT PoS and this should be mapped out and assessed. Some schools will chose to get all their students to have ICT lessons to cover this requirement and others might do it across the other subjects.

This is the National Curriculum page for KS4 which will show you which subjects are statutory and shows you the PoS in case it helps in anyway. Just to clarify I?m not saying I agree with this, just these are the facts. Hope I haven?t confused things further for you...

It is the wrong way round though Dan. Of course RE involves learning about History, Philosophy, Politics, Anthropology and Geography. All of these are in fact more important than RE, on the basis that they apply to 100% of the world's population, including the child studying them and deal partially with material reality.

RE could be covered as a topic within any of these other disciplines, all of which have greater claims to be important to humanity in their own right than RE does.

A MFL is compulsory at our school if you're in the upper set.

RE is a compulsory lesson but not everyone takes the GCSE at the end of the two years; some take a diploma-type thing.

im shocked by this, RE shouldnt be taught unless they can leach about ALL religions, which is impossible, my ds will not be studying RE under no circumstances. when i was at school they made everyone study it unless the religion they were wasnt looked at, there were 2 girls who were Johovah Witnesses and they got to sit the lesson out, they also didnt participate in assembly as it was ended with the lords prayer.
we need to teach children a language, its sad that we pressume that everyone else can speak english so there is no need for languages, sayinf that my nephew is dyslexic and after 4 years doing french still didnt understand the language but they made him sit his GCSE exam or my sister would be fined, needless to say he got an ungraded.

I don't mind the idea of RE being compulsory at GCSE, but only if a Modern Language (or two) and History are also compulsory.

Memphis, I don't think that legally you can withdraw your child from religious education, only religious worship.

The main issue IMNoTSoVeryHO is that secondary schools today try to be all things to all people: they try to cater to everyone and consequently offer a staggering array of subjects which weren't even heard of back in the olden days when I did O levels.

I totally believe that some students require a less academic and more vocational path at school before anyone jumps on me. BUT the problem (now grinding teeth) is that, whereas traditionally your less academically able students did the vocational courses and your more able did trad subjects (e.g. MFL), nowadays, bright students either can't fit in a language as it clashes with something else, or they choose a so-called 'easier' subject so that they can get their A* with less slog than a language would require.

The Modern Language thing in the UK is just out of control. I know so many people who cannot get jobs right now because they are monolingual - all the jobs are going to those who can work in several languages (and lots and lots of people can, though they are rarely those with EMT).

RE is what is known as base curriculum and is the only subject taught by law in the UK under the provisions of the 1948 and 1988 Education Acts. Schools have a statutory duty to teach RE. As it is compulsory at KS4, it is thought worth the students getting a half or whole GCSE in it.

The whole point of being an RE teacher (and I am one), is that we TEACH, we don't preach. I believe that the best RE teachers don't have a religious belief and are either atheist or agnostic.

My aim in life is to ensure that students have a degree of religious literacy when they leave school. I don't give a flying fuck whether they believe in God or not, if they are a Jedi, and atheist or worship a sky blue pink flying spaghetti monster...what I do care about is that they have enough knowledge about the nuts and bolts of religions and what impact this has on their lives through things such as abortion, euthanasia, changes in the law to allow civil partnerships, religious tolerance, how not to get yourself knifed, and why you don't offer your Muslim or Jewish mates a bacon sarnie, to get by when they leave school.

Many students don't live in multi cultural areas, and so this is very important for them when they leave home and go to uni.

Why don't you guys find out what exam board your kids are doing and then look up the syllabus. Edexcel for example covers abortion, euthanasia, contraception, homosexuality, civil partnerships, community cohesion (racism, discrimination, prejudice, benefits of a multi faith society, benefits of a multi ethnic society, problem of evil, for and against the design argument) and that's the short course.

The other paper covers just war, cloning, genetic engineeering, IVF, transplants, environmental issues, hunting, animal rights, situation ethics, how we are governed, attitudes to punishment. It looks at the secular response to these things and the law, and then examines what two religions think about these things, and what different branches of these religions think. It's an academic subject, no more, no less and is interesting and informative. I wish I'd done it instead of bloody chemistry, I might have got another O level instead of an ungraded.

I think it's utterly laughable.

It's like forcing study of "GCSE Aesopp's Fables" or "GCSE Brothers Grimm"

I think a language should be compulsory, but I think RE has its place if it is really well taught and teaches a diverse curriculum. In a modern world a knowledge of other faiths and their customs can only be a good thing. (I'm an athiest and I don't beleive in faith schools)

ALso everyone can learn a language.. We all speak at least one... (yes, some people are better but we all have the basic ability)

And unfortunately, many schools still don't make a language compulsory for top set students.

Such a waste of talent.

I quite like the idea of a subject called something like World Studies, that was compulsory and included history, geography, politics/economis and religion - because I think we should be equipping young people to leave school with the bigger picture of the world around them. Not necc in great depth at GCSE level, but enough so they can understand (for example) what a communist regime is, what Muslims believe, how banks work and how our civilisations were formed. Just a sense really that the world is big, and that people do things differently in it.

Then, if they want to study any of those in further depth, separate GCSEs could be taken.

I would rather see RE incorporated into a wider optional course, including philosophy, ethics etc. But RE as a subject at GCSE? No thank you and my children WILL NOT be studying it - it's a waste of time (and I mean that in terms of hours spent on a subject when they could be learning French/Spanish/Chinese)

I think a language should be compulsory at GCSE.

'im shocked by this, RE shouldnt be taught unless they can leach about ALL religions,'...but we do teach all religions from KS2 upwards.

At KS3 I teach and have taught, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Sikhism was a KS2 religion sadly, as I enjoyed teaching that. Thus, over the 5 years of being at Secondary (in Cornwall at least), the students would have had the opportunity to study 5 out of the big 6 that we teach.

At KS4 for the GCSE board we used you studied Christianity and one other religion, in our case it was Judaism as we had a Judaism specialist on the staff.

Herbie - knowing the quotes would have upped his grade, just like using a supporting quote from Shakespeare in Eng Lit. Many of the questions can be answered without using any quotations however; I marked enough of them this summer, so I should know!

That's interesting scaryteacher - I didn't study RE at all in my school at a secondary level (Scottish independent school). Is it a UK wide act? Can independents choose their own curriculum?

ST, what most offends me about the RE curriculum is that it does teach all these major ethical questions within the context of RE. If schools are going to teach issues such as cloning, abortion and war, they should be taught through as ethical, political and scientific issues. The religious perspective on them should take up about two minutes of the class, and the entire subject should be called ethics not religion.

Treating these issues as a primarily religious concern is dangerous. An otherwise intelligent poster on here was saying recently that she didn't know how athiests made moral decisions and she assumed they went on gut instinct. And who can blame her when ethics in school are taught as RE?

If I am wrong, and it is only RE in name only, then the name itself is offensive. If you said that you were teaching GCSE 'Catholic Education' and there was an uproar from parents, and you attempted to justify it by saying it was mainly about other ethical viewpoints, people would ask for a name change.

Actually it isn't what offends me most about RE. What offends me most about RE is that people say it is vital to teach children about diversity. This ignores the fact that almost all cultural diversity between people has nothing to do with religion, and privileges religious groups over other diverse groups.

Well said scaryteacher.

MillyR yeah take away RE lessons and we end up like America where anything different is viewed with distrust. Our job as RE teachers is to bring understanding about different faiths to our pupils, we are not trying to convert them. So unless your DC go to an academy run by evangelical Christians there is nothing to fear from RE lessons.

Ignorance breeds intolerance.

OTBMS, so it is okay to breed intolerance of differences that have nothing to do with religion?

Why?

Why don't schools teach a subject called cultural diversity instead?

What are you going to be doing with your children within that lesson time then Pfft? They have to be somewhere, and the staff will be teaching. In my school you would have had to come in and supervise them yourself, and set the work for them to be comparable with what they should have been doing.

RE is normally taught on a hour a week, so I hardly think it is taking away from any MFL studies they may do.

I wish you lot would all be a bit more open minded about what RE actually teaches, rather than the knee jerk reactions on here.For what it's worth, my son is doing 2 humanities, 3 sciences, the compulsory English and Maths, his compulsory language (does the GCSE this year and will do AS next) plus his second foreign language, and RE at home. What I have managed to get him out of is the requirement to do a 'practical' subject, as the one he wanted clashed with his second MFL, and he didn't want to do IT or Drama or DT. I hated the 'creative'/practical subjects at school and fail to see why these should be compulsory. They were a real waste of my time.

re not compuslary at ds school he choose options last year and picked it and theres only 13 in his clas that doing it .but he has also picked triple science , history and georgraphy picked his options with teh career choice he has in mind

But tehn he has droped langages and art music drama etc with the greates of pleasure and im happy with that