Guy Hordern writes: For more than eighty years, the Church of England has had a formal place in determining what is taught in Religious Education in England. That may shortly change. The Government is proposing that Religious Education should become part of the National Curriculum. I am not writing to argue for or against that proposal.
I am writing because I participated in one of the Reference Groups established as part of the process of developing the proposed new arrangements, and my experience has left me with some questions about how the new curriculum has been produced, who has participated in producing it, and what is meant when we are told that a “consensus” has been achieved.
These questions matter particularly to the Church of England.
An eighty-year settlement
Religious Education has occupied an unusual position in English education since the Education Act 1944. Unlike most subjects, its curriculum has not simply been prescribed nationally. Locally Agreed Syllabuses are produced through an Agreed Syllabus Conference. The structure is deliberately representative. There are 4 committees representing
- The Church of England
- Other faiths including non-religious views and Christian denominations other than the Church of England
- Teachers
- The local authority
Each Committee has one vote. The syllabus must command the unanimous agreement required across these constituent groups before it can be adopted by the Local Authority. The system may sometimes appear cumbersome. Consensus usually is. But it has a considerable virtue: we know who is in the room, whom they represent, where authority lies and how agreement has been reached.
I have some experience of this process. I have been a member of Birmingham SACRE since 1977 and chaired the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus Conferences in 2002 and 2022. I have also served as a member of the General Synod. I have seen people with very different understandings of Religious Education reach agreement. Agreement does not mean that differences disappear. It means that those differences have been exposed, discussed and negotiated, and that those responsible for the eventual decision can be identified.
That is an important distinction, because the existing arrangements do not merely give religious communities and others an opportunity to be consulted. They give them a defined place in the decision-making process.
The architecture recognises that determining what children should be taught about religion is sufficiently important, and potentially sufficiently contested, that no single interest should determine the answer. If RE becomes a National Curriculum subject, that settlement will fundamentally change. The Church of England will lose a statutory role in determining the RE curriculum which it has held for more than eighty years.
That does not in itself mean that the change is wrong. National arrangements might bring greater consistency and could strengthen the entitlement of pupils to serious, high-quality Religious Education. But there is an obvious question.
If we are replacing a system in which representation, responsibility and the means of reaching agreement are explicitly defined, what is the corresponding system at national level?
Who is in the room? Who chose them? Whom do they represent? Who actually writes the curriculum? And how do we know when agreement has genuinely been reached? Those questions seem particularly important because the word now being used about the national proposals is “consensus”.
What the Francis Review proposed
The Curriculum and Assessment Review chaired by Professor Becky Francis recognised the unusual position of RE and recommended a staged approach to bringing it within the National Curriculum. Its recommendations are well worth reading carefully.
The Review proposed that representatives of faith groups, secular groups and the wider teaching and education sector should form a task and finish group. That group was to engage with faith and non-faith schools, RE organisations and faith communities in order to “co-create a draft RE curriculum”. The process was expressly intended to be sector-led, with the Department for Education supporting efforts to reach consensus. Unlike an Agreed Syllabus Conference, however, “the sector” was never defined, and significant constituencies were not represented in creating the curriculum.
Only then came Stage 2:
If consensus on a draft RE curriculum can be reached, the DfE should conduct a formal consultation on the detailed content.
There is an important sequence here: Co-creation; Consensus; Consultation. My concern is whether that is what actually happened. I was part of the process; I was invited to participate in one of the Reference Groups and accepted the invitation anticipating that it would provide the broad and serious deliberation envisaged by the Francis Review and would follow the pattern of a Locally Agreed Syllabus. My experience was different.
Those participating in the Reference Groups were not given a clear account of how membership had been determined, whom participants were intended to represent, or to whom they were accountable. More surprisingly, we were not initially told who was actually writing the Programmes of Study on which we were being asked to comment.
That distinction is important. The Reference Groups did not themselves draft the Programmes of Study. We were presented with material which had already been substantially developed and given tightly limited opportunities in which to respond to it. In one instance, the time available for consideration and discussion of the final draft of the programmes of study was approximately 45 minutes. We were not able to take copies away for careful examination although we were told that the committee of the Religious Education Council studied the programmes of study at a recent meeting.
Having spent many years participating in the locally agreed syllabus system, I found the contrast striking. In an Agreed Syllabus Conference, I know the status in which I am participating. I know the status of the other participants. We know who is responsible for the document before us. We know where disagreement exists. Most importantly, we know what constitutes agreement.
In the national process, I found those things much less clear. That is consultation of a kind. I find it impossible to describe it as co-creation.
Other participants have expressed similar concerns. The Independent Schools Religious Studies Association, whose representative also participated directly in the process, formally dissented and reluctantly I dissented as well.
What does “consensus” mean?
There appears to be substantial support across the RE community for the principle that pupils in every school should receive high-quality Religious Education, and there is significant support for bringing RE within the National Curriculum. But agreement with that principle is not the same thing as agreement with a particular curriculum.
One can believe that RE should become a National Curriculum subject while disagreeing profoundly about what that curriculum should contain, how it should conceptualise religion, how much attention should be given to particular traditions, or what disciplinary approach should underpin the subject. These are not minor details. They concern the nature and purpose of Religious Education itself.
Yet “consensus” is increasingly being used in discussion of the reforms. We therefore need to ask: consensus about what? Consensus that every child deserves good RE? Consensus that RE should enter the National Curriculum? Or consensus about the particular Programmes of Study that have been produced? Those are three very different propositions.
The Francis Review itself recognised that compromises would be required if genuine consensus were to be achieved. That makes it all the more important that disagreement is visible rather than absorbed into a general claim of sector support. There is also an instructive contrast with the system we are proposing to replace. Under the locally agreed syllabus arrangements, unanimous consensus is not simply asserted. There is a mechanism through which agreement must be demonstrated.
If the word “consensus” is to carry comparable weight in a national system, we ought to know who has consented to what.
Where was the Church of England?
For Christians and particularly for members of the Church of England, there is another question. Where, precisely, was the Church in the creation of the curriculum which may replace the system under which it currently has a statutory voice?
The Francis Review explicitly envisaged faith communities participating in the co-creation of the draft curriculum. Of course, individual Anglicans and Church bodies have been involved in discussions around the reforms. But that is not quite the same question.
If the Church of England is to surrender a formal statutory role which it has exercised for more than eighty years, surely it is reasonable to ask what corresponding and identifiable role the Church had in creating the national arrangements which will replace it. Was this an agenda item at the General Synod of the Church of England? Consultation on something already written is not the same as participation in writing it. That distinction seems to me important.
Why process matters
Some may wonder whether this is simply procedural. If the eventual curriculum is good, does it matter who sat on which committee? I think it does. Curriculum making is never neutral. Decisions have to be made about what knowledge matters, what is omitted, how a subject is organised and what intellectual traditions pupils encounter. Those choices become particularly sensitive in Religious Education because questions of religion, belief, non-belief, truth and human identity are involved.
A process capable of commanding confidence therefore needs more than expertise. It needs transparency. We should be able to know who drafted the proposals, how they were appointed, what range of perspectives was represented, how disagreement was recorded and what evidence supports a claim that unanimous consensus has been achieved.
That is not obstructionism. It is the ordinary accountability we should expect when public policy is being made.
The consultation must genuinely be a consultation
The forthcoming national consultation provides an opportunity to put this right. But only if it is genuinely open. The danger is that two questions become quietly collapsed into one: whether RE should enter the National Curriculum and whether the particular proposals now produced are the right ones. The first may command considerable support without the second having been settled at all. That is why the language of consensus matters.
If we are already told that consensus has been achieved on what children should learn, what exactly is the forthcoming consultation being asked to decide? A consultation must permit the possibility that substantial elements of the proposals could change. Otherwise, it risks becoming not consultation but ratification.
Some questions worth asking
I am not asking Christians, members of General Synod or others concerned about Religious Education automatically to oppose bringing RE into the National Curriculum. I am asking something much more modest. Before we dismantle a statutory settlement, which has existed since 1944, can we establish clearly:
Who actually drafted the proposed Programmes of Study?
Who appointed them, and according to what criteria?
What role did the Reference Groups have in creating the proposals, rather than commenting upon them?
What meaningful role did the Church of England have in their creation?
What disagreements were recorded during the process?
And, perhaps most importantly:
On what evidence is a sector-wide consensus being claimed.
After nearly fifty years involved with Religious Education through Birmingham SACRE, I want RE to flourish. I want children and young people to encounter religion seriously and intelligently, and the subject to command the respect it deserves. A National Curriculum may help achieve that. But such a significant change should command confidence not merely because we are assured that a consensus exists, but because the process by which that consensus was reached can itself withstand scrutiny. For more than eighty years, our system has recognised that deciding what children should learn about religion requires different voices to sit around the table and reach agreement.
If we are going to replace that system, we are entitled to know who is sitting around the new table, and who decided that they should be there.
Guy Hordern MBE is a member of Birmingham Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education since 1977, and a member of the General Synod of the Church of England 2021-26.
He was Faith Advisor to Cllr (now Lord) Whitby the Leader of Birmingham City Council between 2004 and 2012 and is currently a Faith Advisor to Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority.
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