Agenda and minutes

Peter Martin was proposed and seconded to be elected as Chair and County Councillor Anne Cheetham was proposed and seconded to be elected as Vice Chair.

The Chair thanked the previous Vice Chair, County Councillor Yousuf Motala, for all his hard work and support.

Apologies were received from County Councillors Stewart Jones and Yousuf Motala, and Ben McMullan.

The minutes of the last meeting held on 27 September 2021 were agreed as a true and accurate record.

An Annual report had to be produced every year on the work of the SACRE. This year the Lancashire SACRE had been advised by the NASACRE of a new standardised report format which has been agreed by the Department for Education.

Alison Lloyd had created the draft Annual Report on recollections of what had happened and information gathered. Members were asked to look through the new SACRE Annual Report Framework to see if anything had been missed out or could be worded better. Normally what happened was that the SACRE would feedback their comments to Alison and at the QSS meeting in January the final document would be shared and later would be sent to the NASACRE and the DfE as the final report had to be in by the end of January.

The report included all that happened at the Lancashire SACRE meetings in the academic year from September 2020 to August 2021. It was pointed out that the September 2021 meeting was also included in the report. This was because  a lot of the things the SACRE had done in the year were about working towards the new Lancashire Agreed Syllabus which had been discussed at the September 2021 meeting.

Regarding the Agreed Syllabus Conference, the report made note of the expert advice of Joanne Harris (Head of Humanities at Broughton High School / LCC RE Associate Consultant) and Lat Blaylock (RE Today).

The syllabus was not just used by Lancashire Maintained Schools but also by a number of academies and the maintained schools of other local authorities.

The report stated that it was a statutory role of the SACRE to monitor the standards and the quality of RE provision in schools.

Regarding 'Requests for Withdrawal from Religious Education', there was no entry for this in the report at the moment. Schools had been asked to submit their data by 3 December 2021. This data would be discussed at the next QSS meeting.

The report stated that the Lancashire SACRE continued to maintain positive links with a number of agencies. Regarding Diocesan Groups it was felt that links with the Lancashire Methodist District should be included. It was felt that there should be more information included for all the agencies.

Under the section 'Local SACRE Involvement', it was felt it was important to explain what Building Bridges was and its origin. It was important to have more information on events that took place across the county during Interfaith Week. It was also important to note what was happening within the dioceses across Lancashire.

It was felt that the report gave an excellent overview of how, in difficult times, the Lancashire SACRE had managed to adapt and modify in order to deliver and support Lancashire schools effectively.

It was agreed by SACRE members to put this draft report forward to the QSS Group to finalise.

Alison informed members that she had received some findings from Kathleen Cooper who stated that it had been an interesting and thought provoking process. Kathleen had electronically highlighted the evaluation documents showing how each school was rated and what her judgements were on their websites.

Alison requested that other members send their findings to her so that they could be looked at in the next QSS meeting and then report back to the next full SACRE meeting.

The feedback referred to two elements of online training:

  i.  Training that was available for members of the SACRE through the NASACRE website.

  ii.  Training available to RE teachers in Lancashire in respect of the new syllabus.

Members were informed that 60 people had attended the online training for RE teachers in Lancashire on the new syllabus. There was another training session for people who could not attend this earlier session and 91 people attended. There had been no formal evaluation as it had been all online. Feedback received was that teachers were keen to get to grips with the syllabus. Interest in the syllabus and the fact it was so clearly structured had been very helpful for teachers.

The online training that was available for SACRE members had included training on World Issues. This training had been very interesting and wide ranging. It was also thought to be quite academic, opened your eyes to world views and was helpful to hear. Within each religion there were different approaches and world views. If you were not religious you still had your own world views.

 Members were informed that Lancashire had made the new syllabus free to all academies so they did not have to buy it in. It was freely available to all academies within Lancashire.

It was suggested that a letter be written from the SACRE to all Lancashire academies informing them of the availability of the new Lancashire Agreed Syllabus.

The SACRE was informed that the QSS was impressed with the openness of the questions of the survey. Thanks was given to Helen Sage for sending some useful documents to help with forming the survey.

Alison Lloyd was open to feedback and comments on the survey. School consultants had been asked to trial the survey in their schools.

Alison was thanked for putting the Pupil Voice Survey together.

If a school wanted to have worship which was not mainly Christian in nature for example, it had to apply to the SACRE for permission to do so and this was called a Determination. A Determination lasted for 5 years before it had to be resubmitted. It was pointed out that the last time the Lancashire SACRE had a single Determination was about 15 years ago. Every school had the right to ask for a Determination. Schools that were not maintained schools in Lancashire did not apply to the SACRE for a Determination. Academies would apply to the Academy Trust for a Determination.

The Chair pointed out that in all his years on the Lancashire SACRE there had only been one school that had applied for a determination and after three years it had withdrawn its request for a determination. The SACRE had still to be aware that there may be maintained schools in Lancashire where circumstances arose that the school felt it was appropriate to apply for a determination so there needed to be a proper proforma for this.

Alison had looked at lots of different examples from elsewhere in order to put this Determination proforma together. It was vital to have this proforma available for schools.

The Collective Worship in Lancashire Schools Guidelines had been tidied up and amended slightly. The last time the document was circulated it had all the additions and changes marked on it. Since then, it had been looked at again twice and these had now been removed. The final document was now uploaded to the RE website.

The document was carefully compartmentalised into collective worship in the life of the school, management of collective worship, development of collective worship and the delivery of collective worship. Any school should find this a very comprehensive document.

The Lancashire SACRE welcomed the Collective Worship in Lancashire Schools Guidelines presented at the meeting as the final document.

The Chair, Peter Martin, informed members that he had email correspondence with one of the Teacher Associations, the NASUWT, who were proposing a new representative for their professional association. The teacher that had been put forward was not an employee of Lancashire County Council and therefore not eligible to be a representative of the NASUWT on the Lancashire SACRE and a suitable replacement was now being looked for.

Helen Sage informed the SACRE, that as part of Interfaith Week, the Knife Angel had been a valuable part of the week. The Knife Angel had reached over 16,000 pupils across Lancashire.

Building Bridges had a number of events during Interfaith week that had been well attended.

Also during Interfaith Week, Ahmed James had given a presentation on Islam and Afrocentrism which had been well received. Ahmed was looking forward to doing this on a regular basis. It was suggested that he make the presentation to the SACRE in the future.

There was no Observers' Contributions.

SACRE:

Monday 7 February 2022 10.00am

Monday 25 April 2022 10.00am

Monday 4 July 2022 10.00am

Monday 26 September 2022 10.00am

Monday 28 November 2022 10.00am (Annual General Meeting)

QSS:

Wednesday 12 January 2022 at 10.00am

Wednesday 16 March 2022 at 14.00pm

Wednesday 8 June 2022 at 10.00am

Wednesday 7 September 2022 10.00am

Wednesday 2 November 2022 10.00am

The proposed dates of meetings in 2022 were agreed.

The next scheduled meeting of the SACRE will be held at 10.00am on Monday 7 February 2022.

The next scheduled meeting of the Lancashire SACRE would be held at 10:00am on Monday 7 February 2022.