Compulsory RE GCSE

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My daughter has been given a place at a C of E secondary. It was not any of our choices and is taking the 'unplaced' children.

I'm sure it will be fine, except for the fact that RE appears to be a compulsory GCSE.

We are not religious at all and don't want her to be forced to take this as one of her options.

What can we do? Is it ever taken into account when appealing a school place?

As someone scarred by a religious upbringing, I was all set to opt my dds out of RE at secondary if they wanted (not a church school), but they love it and are good at it. They like the discussions on ethics, pacifism, animal rights etc. One of them is considering a philosophy degree and the RE curriculum has lots of links with that.

It also doesn't hurt them to learn about religion/s. There's a lot of religious activity around, they might as well be informed about it all.

If they didn't want to do it I'd just opt them out.

As others have said the GCSE is not about shoving the religion down the children's throats. Or it wasn't at my DC's catholic school

It was about other religions and also the philosophy and ethics side. My DD really enjoyed it.

Not sure so do contradict me if I am wrong bit isn't religious studies at A level counted an academic subject (as in on the acceptable list of subjects for RG uni)

My DC have to do compulsory RE at their non-denominational, multi-ethnic/religion comp. Well, DD did hers in Y10.

It is about comparing religions and is actually reasonably interesting and gives them a bit of background knowledge about different religions and practices. They do not have any religious assemblies or pushing of any religions.

And DD said it was a relatively easy GCSE.

I shouldn't worry about the GCSE as that is the least likely to be overly religious.

However, it is the KS3 teaching that is more likely to be religious as the school might be classed as a school of a "religious character" (depending on whether it is VA or VC) and so able to do denominational teaching at KS3. However, if you are unhappy with this, you do have the right to withdraw your child from RS. But note, the school does not have to do any other teaching in this time.

At Key Stage 4, RS remains compulsory (with the right to withdraw) but this does not have to be a GCSE course. It doesn't even have to be weekly lessons (could be collapsed timetable days etc) but it does have to be done by law. Any school which does not provide RS at KS4 is breaking the law, but changes in OFSTED etc over recent years has seen more schools do this.

At GCSE, the syllabus is set by the exam board. The overwhelming majority of schools at the moment teach philosophy and ethics, but there are other options that the school can teach. For example, they could teach a gospel (often Mark's) or study Catholic Christianity (there's not a C of E option) or just a study of comparative religion.

However, by the time your daughter does her GCSE the syllabus will have changed and the rules will be different. Under the new spec, philosophy and ethics will make up a much smaller percent of the course (25 - 50%) with students having to study at least two world religions. I was at the recent government consultation on the changes, and a lot of us RS teachers were very unhappy with the spec changes, but these are politically driven and we didn't get to see half the changes we asked for.

And yes, A level RS is viewed as a decent option. Trinity College Cambridge rank it as an A2 subject - the highest category for Arts A levels.

It is compulsory to study RE in all state schools. Not all schools actually twk th cam, but the subject is compulsory.

I think it's outrageous that it should be compulsory. However it's a really interesting course- they lots of on philosophy and ethics- which I think should be compulsory! Just a shame it's called RE really. It does have q section on competitive religions- they have to look at the similarities and differences between two of th world's major religions.

I had to point out to my DC that in order to do well in the RE exam they had to mention two religions at least. Until then the way the GCSE is taught they hadn't realised that, as so little focus seems to be on religion and much more on issues. (DD went from a D to a B with that piece of information.)

All state schools have to teach RE to year 11, even academies. My DCs one gets everyone to do the exam, and on far less teaching time than other subjects (interesting the local Catholic school does double the teaching time, but doesn't have massively different exam results).

The RE GCSE is really interesting - at my DCs' school they call it Philosophy and Ethics (although the exam they sit is RE), and that's a much better description. It raised some really good moral/ethical questions and I think was very valuable.

Rarry - that's really interesting about the spec changes. Agree it will be a real shame to see any philosophy/ethics content go.