Agenda and minutes

Jenny Stonhold agreed to serve as Chair of the meeting.

Apologies were received from Cllr Santry, Cllr Rainger, Nick Bradley and Peter Ward.

Ms Chaplin, the RE advisor, explained the members of the Committee that Haringey’s agreed syllabus – being more than 5 years old – needed to be reviewed.

Following discussions between herself and senior officers in the Children’s Service, Ms Chaplin informed the Committee that the review needed to be expedient. This meant that it was unlikely the Committee would be in a position to draft a new syllabus from scratch.

The alternative option was to buy the rights to edit the syllabus of another borough. She explained that the intellectual rights to the syllabus could be bought from another borough who had already produced an Agreed Syllabus that incorporated the National Non-Statutory Framework.

The view was expressed by the representative of the teaching profession present that her colleagues would prefer an agreed syllabus which included units for classroom use. This would assist with lesson planning. Furthermore, there needed to be an assessment scale to aid with ‘levelling’ (i.e. assessing the achievements and knowledge) of children. Teachers needed to be able to see whether a child was attaining, for example, Level 2 or Level 3.

The Lambeth and the Tower Hamlets agreed syllabuses had been circulated to members of the Committee for their perusal.

The Lambeth syllabus contained detailed specifications for units on all of the major faiths. It was based on the Waltham Forest agreed syllabus, which Lambeth had bought the rights to modify.

The Lambeth syllabus had units on Christianity and Islam for each of the four Key Stages. Other faiths would be introduced at Key Stages 2, 3 and 4. There was also a unit on inter-faith dialogue.

The Tower Hamlets syllabus was less prescriptive. It gave minimum requirements for what should be taught about each faith and each key stage.

It was agreed that the approach taken by the Lambeth syllabus was the approach that members preferred.  It would be more helpful for teachers to have information about units for each faith that they could use as a script to assist them. This was felt to be of special importance for non-specialist teachers.

It was agreed that SACRE would recommend that the rights be bought from Waltham Forest to modify their syllabus. The syllabus would then be modified to take into account of the concerns and views expressed by SACRE members, such as those outlined by Rev. Allaway in his submission.

It was agreed that the date of the next meeting would be at 6pm on 14 December 2006.