Items
No. |
Item |
172. |
Membership
To note the membership of the
Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education as
follows:
Group
1 (Christian and Other Religious Denominations)
Mr R Chakkedath,Mrs C Elapatha, Mrs J Grant, Mrs F Hawkes, Miss S Malone,
Mrs E May, Mr Papadopoullos, Mrs G Spragg, Miss J Webb, Mrs J Wigg, Mrs N Younosi
Vacancy:
Judaism representative, Sikhism
representative
Group
2 (Church of England)
Ms C Bostock, Ms N Brownfield,
Mrs V E Corbyn, Mrs B Naden, Mrs N Paterson, Mrs R Swansbury, Miss
R Walters
Group
3 (Teacher Associations)
Ms K Burke, Mrs C Caisley, Mr W Chambers, Mr A Fowler, Mr R
Joyce
Group
4 (Local Authority)
Mrs C Bell, Mrs T Dean, Mr S
Manion, Mr M J Northey
(Co-opted members)
Miss T Kelvie, Miss E Pope
Vacancy:
Co-opted
representative
Minutes:
The
Chair welcomed Mrs R Swansbury as the new Canterbury diocese
representative and Mrs G Spragg as the new Methodist
representative.
|
173. |
Apologies for Absence/ Substitution
Minutes:
Apologies were received from Mrs N Younosi, Mr A Fowler, Mr M
Papadopoullos, Mrs E Pope, Mrs E May and Mrs V Corbyn
|
174. |
Declarations of Interests
Minutes:
|
175. |
Minutes of the Meeting held on 6 March 2018 PDF 89 KB
To receive and agree the minutes of the last
meeting of the SACRE on 6 March 2018
Minutes:
Resolved that the minutes of the previous SACRE meeting held on
6 March 2018
are a correct record and that they be signed by the
Chairman.
|
176. |
Verbal Update Report on NASACRE AGM meeting held on 24 May 2018
To receive and note the verbal update
report.
Minutes:
-
Mrs Smith-Orr commended the success of the NASACRE
AGM and advised Members that should they wish to find out further
information on the event and read the speeches given by the
representatives, these would be available on the NASACRE website.
The keynote speakers included Dr Vanessa Ogden, the Patron of
NASACRE Charles Clarke and the existing Director of the Interfaith
Network David Hampshire. One of the focus points discussed by the
NASACRE AGM Panel was the concern of disconnect between what
children hear at home compared to what
they hear at school and that Religious Education needed to bridge
that gap.
-
RESOLVED that the verbal update be
noted.
|
177. |
Verbal Update Report on the Inter-Faith Forum
To receive and note the verbal update
report.
Minutes:
-
Mrs Smith-Orr said that Kent SACRE had been included
on the data base and that Georgina Little (Kent SACRE Clerk) would
be the main contact listed to receive notifications regarding the
interfaith forums. Mrs Smith-Orr also confirmed that there would be
an Interfaith forum on 13th November 2018 from 6:00pm to
8:00pm in County Hall at Sessions House in Maidstone and all those
whom were interested in going were welcome to attend. The event
would include keynote speakers, the launch of the interfaith
website and six representatives from various faiths, giving those
an opportunity who were interested in learning more about that
particular faith, a chance to discuss it
in greater depth. The committee were also informed that there were
plans to establish a Maidstone Interfaith group which would be
supported by Medway and that details on this would be brought to
future SACRE meetings.
-
RESOLVED that the verbal update be
noted.
|
178. |
Verbal Update Report on the New Kent Agreed Syllabus
To receive and note the verbal update
report.
Minutes:
-
Mrs Smith-Orr confirmed that all SACRE documents on
the KESLI website had been updated and were now available online.
Furthermore, the KELSI website also contained information on how to
request a digital version of the Kent Agreed Syllabus; Mrs
Smith-Orr said that the high demand of requests received had been a
positive message as it reaffirmed that schools were being informed,
through the training events and word-of-mouth, that there was a new
Kent Agreed Syllabus available and efforts were being made to
obtain it.
-
In response to questions that had been raised at
previous SACRE meetings regarding additional training days for the
new Kent Agreed Syllabus, Mrs Smith-Orr suggested that a training
event could be held in the spring. She sought Members views on the
proposal to hold a morning session (for those who could not attend
the original launch events) and an afternoon session which would
offer something additional to those schools who had been using the
syllabus for a year. She confirmed that RE Today would be able to
host the event, however, a date was yet to be confirmed. Mrs
Smith-Orr said that there were 250 schools who did not attend the
launch of the syllabus and could therefore be interested in
attending the training in the spring.
-
Members asked whether a survey could be sent round
to the schools to determine the number of those interested in
attending the training, Mrs Smith-Orr agreed to look at whether a
survey monkey could be sent to schools via the KELSI
website.
-
In response to Members enquiries at to whether there would be a separate training
event for primary and secondary schools, Mrs smith-Orr said that
the underspend within the budget could only accommodate one
training event, however, the training for both primary and
secondary school were very similar and could be amalgamated to
create a one-off generic training event for all levels of
teaching.
-
Members commended the new Kent Agreed Syllabus and
asked about the number of schools that had bought the plans. Mrs
Smith-Orr said that she did not have the number to hand, however,
agreed to send the details to those interested.
-
In response to Members queries regarding the
syllabus overview, Mrs Smith-Orr said that it would have been
difficult to do an overview that incorporated every school as each
institute was varied in terms of what part of the syllabus they
chose to teach. Due to the difficulty and amount of work required,
some community schools took the decision to work together in their
hubs to do an overview; Mrs N Patterson and Mrs V Corbyn also
worked together to create an overview for the Church
schools.
-
Members queried whether the SACRE budget was used
appropriately to review the Kent syllabus. Mr Manion confirmed that
although RE Today was commissioned to write the new Agreed
Syllabus, a vast amount of work was carried out by the Kent SACRE
to review and customise the content before the final document was
produced.
-
RESOLVED that the verbal update ...
view the full minutes text for item 178.
|
179. |
Update Report on the SACRE Budget Meeting PDF 69 KB
To receive and note the SACRE Budget
report.
Minutes:
- Miss Smith-Orr provided an update on the budget report and
advised Members that due to the inconsistency of information
presented at previous SACRE meeting she met with Emma Stone
(Business and Finance Process Officer) and Georgina Little
(Democratic Services Officer) to review the finance forecast and
align costs to the appropriate budget. Mrs Smith-Orr confirmed that
SACRE had consistently underspent and was forecasted to incur
savings of £1314. To avoid a further underspend the money
would be used to host another training event.
- Members commended the revised report and its
clarity.
- RESOLVED
that the budget report be noted.
|
180. |
The Draft Development Plan PDF 82 KB
To receive and note the Draft Development
Plan.
Additional documents:
Minutes:
-
Mrs Smith-orr introduced
the Draft Development plan which had been formulated using the
results of the Self-Evaluating Toolkit at the previous SACRE
meeting. The Toolkit was designed to help individual SACRE’s
evaluate their role and consider their impact on pupils’
educational experience. The Toolkit highlighted five key dimensions
of a SACRE’s work and provided examples of good practice
which enabled members of SACRE to evaluate what category they fell
within, be it ‘Developing’, ‘Established, or
‘Advanced’ and formulate an action plan going forward.
The current development plan was due to expire in July
2019.
-
Mr Manion addressed the ongoing concern around
school’s resistance to share information with SACRE and
sought Members comments regarding the use of a Freedom of
Information (FOI) requests to retrieve the required data. Responses
were as follows:
(a)
Members were concerned with the negative impact this
may have on the relationship between SACRE’s and schools and
felt that more positive avenues needed to be explored before
resorting to Freedom of Information requests.
(b)
Members suggested that schools should be written to
in the first instance asking them for the information required and
informed that should they fail to provide the relevant information;
the school should expect to receive an FOI.
(c)
Members addressed concerns regarding where the
request gets sent to following its submission to the school. It
would often be the case that the school received the request,
however, if the request was passed onto the inappropriate person,
then the request would quite often get misplaced and never
responded to. Members queried whether there was a way of tracking
requests through the system.
(d)
Members suggested that a survey monkey on the KELSI
website may help to eliminate schools that don’t require
SACRE intervention. Academy school would possibly need to be
contacted through alternative means as they may not have access to
KELSI.
-
RESOLVED that the draft development plan be
noted.
|
181. |
Verbal Update Report on the Monitoring of School Websites
To receive and note the verbal update
report.
Minutes:
-
Mrs Smith-Orr provided an update on the RE and
Collective Worship monitoring spreadsheet and reminded the
committee that at the last SACRE meeting, Members were asked to
discuss and endorse the proposal to implement the monitoring tool
which would be used to identify what schools in Kent met the
statutory obligations which fell within Ofsted’s inspection
criteria. Ms Smith-Orr advised Members that Ofsted were using
school websites as the initial trigger for inspection and that
SACRE were responsible for ensuring that schools received the
correct support and guidance that would help deter investigations.
Mrs Smith-Orr asked Members to confirm whether they would be able
to participate in the monitoring of schools and the geographical
areas in which they worked. Once Mrs Smith-Orr had received the
information from the Members she agreed to send a template with a
list of schools to each Member for completion. Schools would be
informed of this exercise through the use
of the school bulletin.
-
In response to Members queries regarding
communication with the schools, it was agreed that there should be
two template letters that get sent; one commending the school on
its efforts to maintain a broad and balanced curriculum and the
other containing guidance around what school websites should
contain regarding SACRE requirements.
-
Members asked whether it was a statutory requirement
for schools to mention the right of withdrawal, Mrs Smith-Orr said
that the school needs to clearly state it within their policy or
prospectus, but it does not have to be on the school
website.
-
RESOLVED that the verbal update be
noted.
|
182. |
Training for SACRE Members on 'What a Determination is and how one would be responded to'
To understand what a determination is and how
to respond to enquiries.
Minutes:
1.
Mrs Smith-Orr presented a series of slides that set
out the role of SACRE’s, what its role was in terms of
Collective Worship and how to manage determinations. The SACRE has
a statutory duty to ‘grant a determination’ to a community school
where it is felt collective worship of ‘a broadly Christian
character’ is not appropriate for all or some pupils.
If a school feels that the requirement for broadly
Christian worship is inappropriate for some or all of the pupils usually because of their family or
faith background, the headteacher can apply to the local SACRE for
a ‘determination’ to have this requirement lifted or
modified for some or all of the pupils. Mrs Smith-Orr said that if
a school was to request a determination then the correct process
should be applied, including, consultation between the Headteacher
and governing body and a consultation with the parents. The request
is then sent to SACRE to consider and a decision would be made. If
the case for a determination cannot be justified SACRE could
intervene and offer additional guidance on how to make collective
worship more inclusive without having to apply a determination.
Members were reminded that a determination did not excuse a school
from doing Collective Worship, this still needed to take place but
did not need to be broadly Christian.
2.
Members asked whether schools could be prosecuted
for not doing Collective Worship, Mrs Smith-Orr said that due to
the ambiguity of the term worship, it made it very difficult for
Ofsted to prosecute schools.
3.
In response to whether the Collective Worship
document was available on the KELSI website, Mrs Smith-Orr
confirmed that this had now been uploaded and available to
view.
4.
Members commended the schools for managing a topic
that could present many challenges and recognised the efforts of
those involved.
5.
RESOLVED that the information set out in the
presentation and given in response to comments and questions be
noted.
|
183. |
Presentation from the Friar
To receive and note the information
presented.
Minutes:
Fr
Francis, the Prior of Aylesford was in attendance for this
item.
- The Chair welcomed the guest speaker. Fr
Francis, the Prior of Aylesford spoke of the origins of
Carmelite friars, the friar brotherhood, the role he
played in society and provided some history in relation to the
Aylesford Priory itself.
- RESOLVED that
members noted the information as presented.
|
184. |
Other items not on the agenda
Minutes:
1.
Mr Manion put before Members of SACRE the
implications around parents who decided to home educate their
children and whether they were required to follow the local agreed
syllabus, or could they choose from another authority.
2.
Mr Northey said that he did believe that parents
were not under any obligation to teach the National Curriculum or
Religious Education. As it was elective home education it would be
the decision of the parent as to what their child’s education
included. He agreed to review this and report the findings back to
the committee.
|
185. |
Date of the next SACRE meeting
To note that the date of the next SACRE
meeting will be on Tuesday 27 November 2018 at Sessions House in
the Council Chamber.
Minutes:
RESOLVED that the date of the next SACRE meeting is
Tuesday 27th November 2018 and future dates would be
sent out as soon as they become available.
|