Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Harsha Shukla, Lisa Fenton and Joanne Harris.

The minutes of the last meeting held on 29 November 2021 were agreed as a true and accurate record.

Alison Lloyd updated the group on the training opportunities that were planned for the spring term.

On 25 February 2022 there was Subject Leader training for the Yarrow Schools Teaching Alliance. On 25 March 2022 training was being provided for trainee teachers who accessed the School Centred Initial Teacher Training Programme. There was also planned training for all schools on assessment. This would hopefully take place on 25 May.

Members were informed that the SACRE Annual report had now been submitted to the DfE and the NASACRE after being signed of by the SACRE QSS.

The SACRE newsletter for spring 2022 had now been circulated and was attached to the agenda.

A survey had been sent to special schools in authorities that used the Lancashire syllabus. Views from these schools was being gathered on what adaptions were needed and what training would be welcomed to enable teachers to best meet the needs of their pupils. Alison was commended for her work on this.

A range of new subject leader resources were now available to teachers. These included a pupil voice monitoring tool, a quality of education evaluation proforma, a model policy document and a website evaluation tool.

The QSS intended to and the NASACRE website evaluation tool following feedback after a trial run in the autumn term.

Regarding the monitoring of Ofsted reports published between 1 September 2021 and 21 January 2022, Alison had looked at all of the voluntary controlled and community schools that would use Lancashire's syllabus and discovered not one school had a deep dive for Religious Education to begin with. Some schools had comments about British values. It was suggested that the SACRE write to Ofsted stating that the situation was noted and that there was concern that RE was being sidelined. It was stated that RE was a requirement of every school's curriculum. The LA Officer to the SACRE was unsure whether this would be an approach welcomed by schools, especially those who were still working on improving their curriculum and did not yet feel confident with the deep dive approach.

Because Ofsted was putting little importance on RE there were concerns about how RE was being taught in schools. It was felt that what Ofsted was looking for was being translated into what schools were doing.

It was noted that it would be a good idea to ask the North West Hub how many deep dives for RE there had been across the North West and perhaps a letter to Ofsted could come from the Hub. The Lancashire SACRE could also ask the NASACRE to take this situation up with Ofsted and the DfE, It was also thought to be a good idea to liaise with voluntary controlled schools who all used the syllabus.

The SACRE Newsletter for the spring term 2022 had been circulated to members with the agenda. Much of the information in the newsletter was reinforcing some of the items in the RE update report. The Lancashire SACRE thanked Alison for compiling the newsletter.

There was now a revised format for the Annual Report and members were informed that NASACRE had produced a new evaluation tool and this would be shared with members in the summer term.

In the Development Plan the objectives highlighted in green had been completed and preparation work had been highlighted in yellow. In terms of monitoring the success criteria could not be evaluated unless the objective had been monitored. One of the key ways of monitoring was the 'Survey for Schools' which happened at the end of the year.

It was pointed out that in Objective 1.1 under 'Monitoring/Quality Assurance' the section stating 'A selection of school websites are monitored by SACRE members to check for compliancy' was highlighted in yellow. This had now been done by some members, so now could be highlighted in green.

Under Objective 1.3, 'Findings from the 2021 census are shared with the SACRE', this could not be done at the moment as the data from the census was not published yet.

Regarding Objective 1.4, schools had been made aware that attainment data would be collected this year and had been informed about the training and resources that would be provided from May 2022.

In terms of Objective 1.6, the Lancashire SACRE would wait to see the results of the SEND survey which had been sent to schools.

Regarding the action under Objective 2, 'The SACRE agrees how to respond when a school is identified as not meeting its statutory responsibilities', it was felt that maybe the SACRE QSS could look at his.

By consent schools have had visits from about 2 or 3 SACRE members at an agreed date. These visits were not a form of inspection. The schools shared with these SACRE members what they thought was good practice in their schools. As there were no visits taking place at the moment, the SACRE was reliant on data from the schools which would then be presented at the SACRE meetings.

It was pointed out to the forum that under Objective 2.2 there was a list of things that SACRE did to monitor RE. There was no statutory duty for schools to provide attainment data.

Regarding Objective 2.3 on the Youth Voice, members were informed that a document had been drafted that subject leaders could use to gather information from their own schools. It was pointed out that when the annual survey for schools was done at the end of the year, there could be a survey for pupils as well.

There were no Observers' contributions.

There was no Members' News.

The Lancashire SACRE had received with the agenda a document from Birmingham on 'School Visits to Places of Worship in Birmingham'. Members were encouraged to share this document with people they knew who were working in schools at the present time. The document was thought to be a useful resource and might be added to the next newsletter.

The next scheduled meeting of the SACRE will be held at 10.00am on Monday 25 April 2022.

The next scheduled meeting of the Lancashire SACRE would be held at 10:00am on Monday 25 April 2022.

It was agreed to give consideration to the future format of meetings, i.e. physical, virtual or hybrid.