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.