Schools are failing to teach pupils about Christian beliefs in religious education lessons, education watchdog Ofsted said today.
There is a plethora of articles today reporting on the news that Ofsted has stated that schools are failing to teach pupils about Christian beliefs in religious education lessons.
I know that my view won’t be very popular, but frankly who cares anymore what is taught in Religious Education. The fact of the matter is, true Christian education should be the preserve of the family and the church. It is not the responsibility of a publicly funded education system to pump out Christians. The only folks who can truly teach Christianity are those who are themselves Christian.
Some Christians will be up in arms over all of this, but for me personally, I learned nothing of Christianity from my RE teacher and looking at my sons school work, it might be better all round if the public education system removed religious education altogether.
This is from my sons school RE book:-
Christians have been responsible for two millenia of suppressing women and Christians believe that if they are good they will go to heaven.
Islam was cited as bringing science and mathematics to humanity.
Uh huh!
ITN:
Religious education lessons in England’s secondary schools are worse now than they were three years ago, according to inspectors.
Teachers are uncertain about what they are meant to achieve when teaching the subject, and some pupils gain only a basic understanding of religion and beliefs, according to a new Ofsted report.
The study published tomorrow by Ofsted, the school watchdog, suggests that teachers in English schools pay more attention to other faiths and that Christian pupils are being sidelined in class.
Inspectors found that overall the quality of RE in secondary schools was worse than it was three years ago when the last analysis of the subject was carried out, with inadequate teaching in nearly a fifth of lessons.
It also found that changes to the curriculum in the early years of secondary school, introduced by the Labour government to increase “flexibility”, were having a negative impact on RE; in some schools it had been amalgamated with other lessons and had all but disappeared.
But one of the “specific concerns” raised by inspectors was the poor teaching of Christianity in some schools. The report suggested that other religions were treated more seriously in RE classes.
Schools are failing to teach pupils about Christian beliefs in religious education lessons, inspectors said today.
Too often they focus on Jesus’s parables to explore pupils’ personal feelings and principles, but ignore any religious significance they may have.
The report, by the education watchdog Ofsted, said standards of teaching in the subject are falling. Christianity is a core part of the compulsory course and is taught alongside other major world faiths, including Judaism, Islam and Hinduism.
Compared with a survey carried out three years ago, the number of lessons classified as inadequate in secondary schools has doubled.
The figures show the quality of teaching to be inadequate in nearly a fifth of lessons over a three-year period. In the past year, though, this had risen to one in three. Inspectors visited a total of 183 primary and secondary schools in 70 authorities to compile the report. They singled out the way Christianity is taught for particular criticism. “Primary schools were often uncertain whether Christian material should be investigated in its own right as part of an understanding of the religion – or whether it should be used to consider moral and social themes outside of the context of the religion,” it said.
In one example given, a primary school used the story of the healing of the blind man to get pupils to try to understand what it would feel like to be blind rather than to gain any understanding of miracles.
“In many cases, the study of Jesus focused on an unsystematic collection of information about his life, with limited reference to his theological significance within the [Christian] faith,” the report said.
However, it added that schools are making progress in teaching about comparative religions, which helps to promote a more harmonious society. But they are neglecting the study of humanism, despite a directive that they should include it on the syllabus. Some local authorities failed to include non-religious beliefs altogether, despite clear guidelines.
The report also highlighted the increasing use of non-specialist teachers to take RE lessons, resulting in a tendency to focus on their own subjects in topic work – ignoring RE.
Further links:
(British Religion in Numbers) BRIN – Transforming Religious Education
British Humanist Association – BHA supports calls to “transform religious education”
The Free Thinker – C of E says there is an urgent need for the Government to invest more in RE
Christian Institute – Ofsted: Christianity is being marginalised in RE lessons
Tags: Christianity, Education
June 6th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Absolutely agree Webmaster. Nothing new however in RE being taught badly in schools. Thinking back to my school days (in the distant past), if anything was calculated to put someone off religion for life it was RE. It was appallingly badly taught!