Nurturing #belonging in the religion and worldviews community

Last week, Culham St Gabriel’s had a stand at the Confederation of School Trusts’ Annual Conference. The theme was #belonging. In our publicity for this event we focused on people, place, and purpose. In changing and challenging times in the education sector we can feel unsettled. However, the sense of belonging in the religion and worldviews community is strong. We need to make sure we shout about this, particularly with those who are entering the profession this term.

People: Nurturing relationships and dialogue

We talked to delegates about our scholarship programme communities, RExChange and our strategic partnerships with many RE organisations. It was a real delight to host our stand with Fiona Moss, CEO of NATRE who could immediately share the value and importance of subject association membership with school leaders. It was good to be able to talk about the vast numbers of networking opportunities for teachers of RE, and MAT RE Leads in particular.

Place: Making connections and supporting community identity

We talked about promoting community identity through promotional films, through our resourcing and funding RE Hubs. We also shared our campaigning work in particular in relation to teacher recruitment and retention and also advocating for freedom of religion or belief. We heard stories from Trust leads about the challenges of recruiting teachers of RE and talked about the ways in which the RE Policy Unit are lobbying for a bursary and wider funding for the subject at the party conferences.

Purpose: Advancing the cause of an education in religion and worldviews

We promoted our project grant awards, scholarships and e-learning courses. We also shared more about the recently published National Content Standard for RE, an important document to clarify standards and support excellence in the subject. In this regard it was good to talk to some of the other exhibitors, including publishers about how they might benefit from the subject having a National Content Standard.

Download the National Content Standard for RE

A webinar about the Standard is being held on 5th December for senior leaders