Agenda and minutes

Members were informed that Sally Elton-Chalcraft, representing Higher Education University of Cumbria, had resigned from the Lancashire SACRE. The Chair thanked Sally for her support to the Lancashire SACRE and wished her well.

Apologies were received from County Councillor Azhar Ali, Sajda Majeed and Mrs Tibret Safraz.

The minutes of the last meeting held on 30 November 2020 were agreed as a true and accurate record.

The draft Pupils Visit Policy had been circulated to all Lancashire SACRE members and was thought to be an excellent document. John Wilson and Malcolm Craig were thanked for leading on preparing the document.

The document had been suitably adopted from Enfield School Visits Policy. It was noted that wearing SACRE badges for school visits would not be suitable and DBS would not be required as SACRE members would be expected to be accompanied in schools.

Regarding the section on progress it was felt a paragraph on how the children were assessed and how their progress was recorded and tracked could be added.

It was also important to note that whenever a SACRE school visit took place it was within a normal school day.

It was suggested that a parallel document could be written slightly differently for schools. This document could be sent to the schools when they volunteered to have a SACRE visit so that they knew what to expect from the visit.

The use of the word assemblies was queried. It was important to differentiate between an act of collective worship and an assembly. An assembly was not necessarily for the purpose of collective worship.

The training and funding of RE staff and what their expectations were could be included in the document. It was also felt that the visits should be recorded by the schools and reported back to governors as the governing body was ultimately responsible for the curriculum in the school.

It was agreed members could email any other comments about the document to Misbah Mahmood to forward on to Alison Lloyd so the document could be finalised.

Members were informed that an Agreed Syllabus Conference meeting had been held in December 2020.

The syllabus had to be revised every five years and it was stated that Alison Lloyd was doing a great job moving things forward with the syllabus. It had been agreed at the conference that it was really an update to the syllabus that was needed and not a complete refresh, in particular the first few pages of the syllabus  needed updating with current thinking in RE. Alison would take suggestions away and do some work with them.

Alison had managed to do much of the background work with Joanne Harris. The language used in the introductory section needed to be updated and Alison was working with others regarding the exemplifications.

Since the meeting of Agreed Syllabus Conference Alison had met with Joanne and they had put a date in the diary to get  all amendments completed by May, so it was hoped it would all be finished by June.

The date of the next Agreed Syllabus Conference had been arranged for 15 March 2021.

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At the last meeting of the Lancashire SACRE, County Councillor Anne Cheetham, Helen Sage, Kathleen Cooper and Ben McMullen volunteered to look at the Collective Worship materials on the Lancashire SACRE website.

Members were informed that the materials on the website were written in 2011 and it was felt not much would have to be changed.

It was decided to make the Collective Worship materials on the Lancashire SACRE website the focus of the next QSS meeting in March 2021. A number of Collective Worship guidelines from other SACREs that had been updated in 2020/21 had been collated and would be circulated to the four volunteers and SACRE Members so they could compare and feedback their views before the next QSS meeting.

Issue 7 (Spring 2021) had been circulated to Lancashire SACRE members.

Members were informed that Joanne Harris had agreed to do some free training for schools on 9 February, 32 people had registered for this training with 18 people on the waiting list which was good news.

It was presumed that all statutory assessments would be cancelled this year so schools would not be asked for their attainment data. However, this would need to be confirmed with all the schools in Lancashire.

Praise was given to Joanne Harris for her involvement, from the SACRE's point of view, in what was going on behind the scenes in what was being offered to staff in schools in terms of training.

There was nothing to report.

There was no correspondence.

Peter Lumsden informed members that on Thursday 4 February there was a webinar on Covid, Faith and Public Health. Two of the Directors of Public Health in Lancashire would be attending as well as a crossover of faith people from medicine, religion and science. So far 80 people had signed up for the webinar. The background of the webinar was about dispelling myths about vaccinations.

Regarding vaccinations, from an Islam point of view there had been a lot of verdicts issued around permissibility. There should be no reason for individuals who were fasting not to be vaccinated.

Malcolm Craig pointed out that the first week of February was World Interfaith Harmony Week.

There were none.

The next scheduled meeting of the SACRE will be held at 10.00am on Monday 26 April 2021.

The next meeting of the SACRE would be held at 10:00am on Monday 26 April 2021.