Nearly one in six schools breach law by failing to provide RE in year 11, new data reveals

Just under one in six schools tell the DfE that they provide no RE in year 11 – a breach of the law. But there are rarely any consequences.

The National Association of Teachers of RE (NATRE) has been reporting on the data from the workforce census for the last nine years. Our agreement with the DfE allows us to share this information with school providers, SACREs and Academy Trusts.

This year’s data shows slightly fewer schools offering no RE in year 11, but it is still the case that just under one in six schools told the DfE that they do not offer RE to this year group at all and far more admit to not providing RE to pupils who do not choose a GCSE Religious Studies as one of their options. In both these cases, this means that effectively, pupils’ religious education ends when they are just 13 or 14 years old, when the law in England requires that the subject be taught to age 18.