Agenda and minutes

County Councillor Anne Cheetham replaced Peter Martin as Chair for this meeting.

The Chair, County Councillor Anne Cheetham OBE JP, welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Apologies were received from County Councillor Stewart Jones, Robert Ash, Dr Malcolm Craig, Julie Gordon, Joanne Harris, Ahmed James, Ben McMullen, Kelsang Pagba, Keith Pennington, Mrs Harsha Shukla and Ishwer Tailor.

The minutes of the last meeting held on 4 July 2022 were agreed as a true and accurate record.

Alison Lloyd, School Adviser, explained that the final date for submission for the annual school self-evaluation was 30 September 2022. Early indications were that a high number of schools had submitted this year. Findings would be shared with the SACRE at the QSS meeting on 2 November 2022.

18 schools had signed up to the ' Using the Lancashire Agreed Syllabus in Special Needs Schools Conference' which was taking place on Monday 3 October. From this conference hopefully an extra annex would be produced to attach to the syllabus and extra guidance would be provided for special needs schools.

Free Network meetings were being held in the autumn term. The focus would be on ways to monitor and moderate standards of religious literacy. Teachers were encouraged to bring RE books to use during the session. There was also an opportunity to consider Religious Education updates, share good practice and discuss challenges with consultants and colleagues from other schools.

SCITT training for trainee teachers had been booked for 11 November where consultants were to deliver training to the North West SCITT cohort.

The dates had now been booked for the Yarrow Cluster. The Yarrow Cluster was a cluster of schools that satellited round the Chorley area. The sessions had been booked for 29 November 2022 and 2 March 2023.

Alison was meeting the consultants again in December to discuss and plan the spring term's training programme.

Alison informed the SACRE that she had looked through the Ofsted reports from all Lancashire schools and could not find one where there was anything written about RE or where a school had a proper deep dive into RE. At a previous meeting of the SACRE there had been a discussion about the other set of schools which used Lancashire's syllabus which were VC schools. Alison had found two VC schools that had been inspected. These were St Mary's CE Primary School, Rawtenstall, and, St Paul's VC Primary School, Rawtenstall. There were positive comments about the RE syllabus in their reports.

The self-assessment tool was a new document produced by NASACRE in July 2021. Through discussions at the North West Hub meeting it was discovered that other SACREs had used it but Lancashire had not yet.

As Lancashire had made good progress with its current Development Plan, it was thought to be a good idea to have a look at this new document and benchmark ourselves again. It was suggested to bring this item back to the next meeting of the SACRE and have it as the only item on the agenda. It was decided that the sensible way of going about this was to make this the main agenda item for the next SACRE QSS meeting on 9 November 2022 and present the recommendations at the next main SACRE meeting on 26 November 2022. It was important that the next QSS meeting was properly quorate.

Verbal update

Peter Lumsden presented to the Lancashire SACRE an update on Building Bridges Burnley. Peter had taken over from Sajda Majeed regarding the offer to schools as it appeared on the Building Bridges Burnley website.

In 2018/19, pre Covid, Building Bridges Burnley had 60 schools engaged in its offer to schools. In 2019/20 81 schools were engaged. The numbers decreased during the two years of the pandemic. Numbers were building back up now and at this early stage of the school year Building Bridges Burnley were getting schools sending in their Service Level Agreements and their requests for bookings. There were now about 20 to 25 schools already engaged and the number was increasing every week. Hopefully there would be between 30 and 40 schools engaged this year.

In his new role Peter was getting more involved with the Faith Friends. It had been interesting to see the increase in requests for visits around Judaism and Hinduism. There had not been much demand for Christianity. There was now a WhatsApp group of the faith visitors so that everybody knew everybody and were able to share experiences and information. One of the aims for this year was to increase the number of volunteers.

Schools could either ask for three visits through the year or there could be a mix of visits with volunteers coming in plus the schools visiting a place of worship.

There was an issue around the person doing the bookings and sort of doing the RE was not usually the person doing the payment. This had caused a bit of disjunction. The treasurer at Building Bridges Burnley was more involved in the process this year.

By the November meeting of the SACRE Peter would be able to report back on examples of the visits that had been made and give more of an idea of the number of schools that had signed Service Level Agreements.

It was pointed out that almost all the schools signed up were primary schools. It was important to re-engage with high schools.

When a booking was made for someone to visit a school it was not just for one session, it was nearly the whole day. This was a significant commitment that the Faith Friends made. Increasing the number of volunteers was a high priority for this year.

Verbal Update

The SACRE was informed that Peter Martin and Alison Lloyd had attended the North North West (NNW) SACRE Hub meeting in July 2022. Paul Smalley from Edge Hill University and Executive Assistant of the NASACRE had also attended.

There were two main items that were discussed at the meeting. One was the new World View Draft Handbook which was discussed in great length. The other was a discussion on the White Paper and what would happen to SACREs moving on as SACREs would probably disappear at some stage if the aims of the White Paper were released.

There were many representatives from different authorities in attendance and was good to discuss particular things and hear what they were doing especially around self-evaluation. It was noted that there was no representation from Blackburn with Darwen SACRE. Helen Sage requested contact details moving forward until a new Chair for Blackburn with Darwen SACRE was in place.

Members were informed that two more SACREs had emerged in the North West. Sefton had received a letter from the DfE saying that it was not meeting its commitments. It had now reinstated its SACRE. Salford had also reinstated its SACRE. Blackpool was also reinstating its SACRE.

Lancashire was now using a new platform for websites. All subjects beyond RE had now moved to this new platform. All content had been transferred to this new website. Alison was meeting with admin once a fortnight to sort it out and make it look good.

The main problem for everybody was that there was no longer a password. Anybody who accesses the website sets up their own personal account. Any SACRE member who wanted to access the LPDS website needed to pass on their email address to the clerk of the SACRE. Alison would then contact Lancashire with one email with everyone who wanted access to the website and all their email addresses. The authority would then set everyone up. The individual would then log on and set their own password. Alison would send out instructions on how to this.

For discussion

The SACRE was informed that all academies accessed Lancashire's syllabus for free now. Academies got copied into all of Lancashire's resources and all of the authority's communications were sent to them. The self-valuation form was sent to them as well. If there was a pathway moving forward where everybody could become academies, it would be difficult to see where the SACRE would sit.

In terms of guidance, in the actual self-evaluation document that was circulated in the agenda, Section 1G was all about relations with the Academies sector. Members were asked to look at Section 1G and see where they felt Lancashire sat.

There had been a lot of attempts to engage with academies through communication. Academies were not responsible to the authority and were not obliged to adopt Lancashire's syllabus. It was important that the authority persisted in making contact with academies setting out clearly what was on offer and what was in it for academies. Lancashire had a lot to offer on the RE front. It was noted that members were unsure if all academies within Lancashire were meeting statutory requirements in terms of teaching RE. Efforts were being made to identify and work with academies however, the authority had no legal remit in this regard.

It was noted that Preston was holding its Interfaith week from the 13^th to the 20^th of November 2022 and there would be a lot of activities taking place. Interfaith Week was not just in Preston it was taking place nationally.

The SACRE was informed that there would be a new appointment of a bishop of Blackburn in the near future.

In terms of the Methodists, Phil Gough was the new District Chair. This would be a two year post in the first instance because there was quite a lot of potential restructuring in the of the North West region for the Methodist Church.

There celebrations taking place for twenty years of Building Bridges Burnley. People from the past had come back to join in the celebrations. There was a recommitment to the vision of Building Bridges of bringing communities together and developing and building relationships.

The NASACRE Briefing No.32 had been circulated on 12 July 2022. The Online Training Programme for the forthcoming year had been circulated on 13 September 2022. Also details of Preston Interfaith Week had been circulated which members had been informed was National Interfaith Week.

Members are asked to consider the provisional Calendar of Meetings for 2023 as follows:

SACRE (Hybrid at 10am)

·  Monday 6 February

·  Monday 24 April

·  Monday 10 July

·  Monday 2 October

·  Monday 20 November (Annual General Meeting)

QSS (Virtual at 10am)

·  Wednesday 18 January

·  Wednesday 1 March

·  Wednesday 7 June 2022

·  Wednesday 6 September  

·  Wednesday 25 October

These dates will be presented for formal approval at the Annual General Meeting on 28 November.

Members were asked to consider the provisional Calendar of Meetings for 2023 as follows:

SACRE (Hybrid at 10am)

·  Monday 6 February

·  Monday 24 April

·  Monday 10 July

·  Monday 2 October

·  Monday 20 November (Annual General Meeting)

QSS (Virtual at 10am)

·  Wednesday 18 January

·  Wednesday 1 March

·  Wednesday 7 June

·  Wednesday 6 September

·  Wednesday 25 October

These dates would be presented for formal approval at the Annual General Meeting on 28 November.

It was important if you represented a faith group that you checked for clashes with religious festivals. If there were clashes the Clerk to the SACRE should be notified.

The next scheduled meeting of the SACRE, which will be a hybrid meeting, will be held at 10.00am on Monday 28 November 2022 in Committee Room 'D', County Hall, Preston.

The next scheduled meeting of the Lancashire SACRE would be held at 10:00am on Monday 28 November 2022 in Committee Room 'D', County Hall, Preston