Agenda and minutes

Members are reminded that at the start of the meeting they should declare any known interests in any matter to be considered, and also during the meeting if it becomes apparent that they have an interest in the matters being discussed.

            The Chair reminded Members of the need to declare any known interests in any matters to be considered at the meeting.  No declarations were made.

See explanatory note below.  Please phone the Committee Officer whose name and number appears at the top of this agenda if you need further guidance.

            No public questions were received during the meeting.

To receive the minutes of the meeting held on 27^th June 2006.

 Resolved – That the minutes of the meeting held on 27^th June 2006, be confirmed and signed as a correct record.

Matters Arising - 

Minute 1 (ii) – Mr Andrew Fleet had confirmed to the Clerk his willingness to accept the appointment as Vice-Chair for the Municipal Year 2006/07.

Minute  4 (i) – The Chair reminded the Teachers Group to confirm their union memberships to the Clerk in order that the appointments to the two vacancies on the teachers group can be confirmed.

Minute 4 (ii) – the Chair advised that he and the SACRE Advisor had met with the Group Director, Children and Director for School Improvement on 26^th July.  This had been a very productive meeting, with the Group Director confirming the continued financial support for the SACRE and the SACRE Advisor, enabling the Chair and Advisor to share their understanding of the role of SACRE, and enabling contacts to the wider Children's Services Agenda to be made.  The SACRE Advisor advised that one of the outputs from the meeting was that an opportunity would be sought to inform Full Council of the Agreed Syllabus and the SACRE's role. 

To receive a short presentation from a member of the SACRE on their faith. 

Mr M S Khan of the Muslim Community will provide a short presentation at the meeting, and will answer questions from SACRE members.

            The presentation from Mr MS Khan of the Muslim Community was deferred to the next meeting, due to Mr Khan being unable to attend this meeting.

            The Committee considered a) a report from the SACRE Advisor setting out a draft toolkit for evaluating collective worship, which had been deferred from the last meeting, b) a toolkit produced by South Gloucestershire Council and SACRE to evaluate Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural Development (SMSC) of pupils to inform the School Evaluation Form (SEF), and c) the final results of a survey of Secondary Schools conducted by Andrew Fleet on their provision of Collective Worship and Religious Education.

            The SACRE agreed that the draft toolkit provided by the SACRE Advisor, was a good starting point to enable schools to begin to evaluate and improve collective worship.  It was suggested that two or three schools could be approached to pilot the form to see if it is helpful and could provide background evidence to support completing the SEF.  Emma McCarthy confirmed that she was planning to use the form to assist with evaluating collective worship at Haydon Leigh Primary School and was happy to report back on its use. 

            Gill Ilic suggested that if the SACRE was looking to improve the form, it could be amended to ask for an evaluation of the ‘impact’ of delivering Collective Worship.  It was recognised that this was difficult to measure, and in many cases impact could be long term.  However, it suggested that schools’ assessments of impact could be carried out via pupil feedback, and through describing the types of behaviour and moral development that might be expected to result from the delivery of successful Collective Worship, and evaluate against that model.   

            It was agreed that an incremental approach be adopted by the SACRE to developing the support for Collective Worship.  It was considered that the Gloucester document for evaluating SMSC was too advanced an approach at this time, but could be revisited in the future.

            The SACRE reviewed the detailed survey of Secondary School's provision of religious education and collective worship.  It was agreed that a summary of output of this survey should be reflected in the SACRE's Annual Report.  It was noted that a significant number of schools were using the RE short course, and the SACRE needed to take time to consider how this might impact on the way in which the SACRE supports schools, and what other lessons should be learnt for the SACRE's role from the research.

            Resolved – (1) The SACRE Advisor make minor revisions to the Toolkit to clarify issues raised by SACRE, including giving opportunity for description of the impact in the comments section, and arrange to pilot the toolkit in 2-3 schools. 

            (2) That further to (1) the toolkit be revised in response to the pilot, and if appropriate, reported back to the SACRE.  (Gill Ilic, Paul Knight and Wendy Tucker offered to assist the SACRE Advisor with the revision of the toolkit following consultation).

            (3) That the survey of secondary schools provision of collective worship and religious education be considered further by SACRE members, to understand the implications for the support provided by  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14.

            The SACRE received a report advising that since the adoption of the Agreed Syllabus in June 2005, teachers groups had been working to produce non-statutory Schemes of Work to support the teaching of the syllabus.  Key Stage 3 schemes of work had been completed and were available on the Swindon intranet for schools, and would be distributed shortly on a disc to all schools.  18 units of work had been written for Key Stage 1 and 2, which took the teaching up to beyond Christmas, and work was ongoing to complete the full range of Schemes of Work.  Examples of Key Stage 2 and 3 Schemes of Work had been circulated to the SACRE for information.

            The SACRE praised the example schemes of work as providing excellent support to enable the Agreed Syllabus to be taught in creative, innovative and consistent ways.

                        Resolved – 1) That the SACRE's thanks be conveyed to all who had been involved in the production of the Schemes of Work to date; and

                  (2) That the SACRE endorses the further work of the Teachers Groups to produce all the required Schemes of Work in support of the Agreed Syllabus by September 2007.

            The SACRE Advisor introduced and circulated a summary of document entitled 'Diversity and Dialogue', which brought together the work of a partnership of organisations encouraging young people of different faiths to meet together and discuss issues, and gain understanding of each others' position.  It was recognised that SACREs were increasingly playing a role outside of monitoring collective worship and agreeing the Agreed Syllabus, to support the Government's community cohesion agenda.  As part of the project grants were available to support individual youth projects.  Bristol City Council and SACRE had applied for such a grant and run a youth conference.  The Advisor asked the SACRE whether it wanted to consider arranging such an event.

            It was suggested that any such event should involve not only young of particular faiths, but also those of no faith.  It agreed that it was important to work in partnership with the Youth Service, or other community cohesion projects, given the time and resources required to run a successful event, such as a youth faith conference.  The SACRE were interested in learning from the experience of other authorities, and of exploring further the examples contained in the document and on the website: www.diversityanddialogue.org.uk.

            Resolved – (1) That the SACRE members consider the examples in the Diversity and Dialogue report, and a further discussion take place at the next meeting.

            (2) The SACRE advisor investigate and report back on the experience of other Councils and SACREs of such projects.

            (3) That the SACRE Advisor explore options for links with the Youth Service and Community Cohesion initiatives for any project that the SACRE may consider.