Minister admits that most teachers of secondary RE mainly teach another subject.
In response to the parliamentary written question asked by Janet Daby MP, minister for school standards; Nick Gibb MP admitted that 51% of the total number of secondary teachers of RE spend most of their teaching timetable delivering a different subject. Only 27% of teachers of History, 28% of Geography and 13% of English fall into this category. This statistic lends further support for the call for immediate action to boost the number of trainee teachers of RE after the government, yet again, refused to offer trainees teachers of RE a bursary and, unsurprisingly, recruitment is currently down 32% on last year (22% for all subjects).
NATRE believes pupils deserve better, and that they should be taught by well-trained and qualified teachers. According to the government’s own teacher standards (3), teachers must “demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge”. It is difficult to see how these can be met when the proportion of specialist teachers is so low.
School leaders struggling to recruit RE specialists blame the DfE, especially as they recently justified the decision, on the basis that in one single year in the last ten (2020/21), the target was exceeded, conveniently ignoring the fact that it had previously stated, “In 2020/21, we saw an unprecedented increase in new entrants to ITT compared to the previous year, which was likely to be a direct result of the impact of COVID-19… “
A school leader in the North of England spoke for many when he described the consequences of DfE policy:
“ I have championed and delivered RE as a compulsory subject from Year 7 to Year 11 for a significant number of years. I have also made it compulsory for all students to sit the GCSE RS examination throughout this time. Unfortunately, the Government did not include RE in the Humanities subjects in the English Baccalaureate and due to a national shortage of RE teachers I have been unable to appoint new staff. Therefore, I do not have trained RE teachers to deliver RE on the scale I have done previously.”
You can find detailed arguments and statistics to support our case for action to support the case for government action including the restoration of bursaries here:
The case for ITT bursaries 2023 final