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I am delighted to welcome you to Culham St Gabriel’s Trust. Our vision is for a high-quality, broad-based religious education, exploring religion and worldviews openly, rigorously, critically and reflectively in the context of a changing and globalised world.

The Trust was formed in 2012, bringing together two former Trusts, the Culham Educational Foundation and St Gabriel’s Trust. The former Trusts were established in the late 1970s after the closure of two Church of England teacher training colleges, Culham College in Oxfordshire and St Gabriel’s College in  Southwark, London.

The Trust is committed to providing teachers of RE and other professionals with the support, connections, challenges and professional development they need. We want all partners in RE, such as parents, school governors, faith/belief communities and policy makers, to be positively aware of the benefits of high-quality RE. You can read more about our Strategic Plan 2016-2020 here:

We have a family of websites which support our vision:

www.cstg.org.uk – this provides information about our grant giving programme, including 3froRE our Masters support scheme.

www.reonline.org.uk – this provides practical resources for the classroom teacher as well as detailed subject knowledge, blogs, ‘email a believer’ and news items.

https://researchforre.reonline.org.uk – this brings together those who teach and research RE, sharing research reports and encouraging collaboration and new ideas, so that cutting-edge research can have a real-life impact both inside and outside the classroom.

www.teachre.co.uk – this provides details of our Teach:RE courses programme. This includes our 200 Hour DFE funded Subject Knowledge Enhancement course, as well short distance learning courses for serving teachers.

These are exciting times for religious education. The Commission on RE (2018) report provides a series of recommendations that could transform the subject for children and young people. As a Trust we are fully committed to investing in the reimagining of the subject, seeking changes and improvements in policy and excellence in classroom practice.

I look forward to working with you as we seek to fulfil our vision.

Today I start as the new Chief Executive of Culham St Gabriel’s Trust (CSTG). It is a huge privilege to take up this role. CSTG is a leading agent for change for RE and my vision as the new CEO is to strive tirelessly for the rejuvenation and reimagination of the subject at all levels from the political sphere to classroom practice. Teachers, children and young people lie at the heart of my passion and ambition for the subject.

Culham St Gabriel’s has had a significant impact on my career as a RE Teacher and as an adviser and consultant. My journey has been inspired and supported by engagement with the Trust (and formally as two Trusts) over the last 20 years.

Networking and partnerships
If my memory serves correctly, I attended a St Gabriel’s Weekend Conference in 1998 as a new Head of RE. I took along with me an NQT from my department. We had a great time! One thing we learned was that you could apply for grants to support teachers. So, we applied!! We submitted an application to set up teacher networks including meetings and newsletters in East London. We were awarded the grant and networking began. As a result I was asked to join the local SACRÉ and coordinated a local celebration of RE bringing together schools and faith communities. In my experience, teacher networking and conferences are of vital importance. For many isolated teachers of RE they provide opportunities to learn from others, sharing effective practice. For this reason, I am proud that CSTG has strategic partnerships with the RE Council of England and Wales and NATRE. I am also delighted that CSTG is supporting the National and Regional Ambassadors programme. These partnerships and programmes are designed to support the individual teacher in the classroom.

Teacher engagement with research
Two years later, I attended a St Gabriel’s conference again, but this time it was to present my Farmington Research http://www.farmington.ac.uk In recent years I have presented my own PhD research as well as findings from the Shared Space project https://www.natre.org.uk/about-natre/projects/the-shared-space-project/ and developments related to multi-disciplinary approaches to RE https://balancedre.org.uk. CSTG has often provided financial support for these conferences and events. Engagement with research is essential if we are to equip teachers with the knowledge, skills and expertise to transform the lives of young people, but also to nurture a love of the subject and love of education more generally. The CSTG research strategy is a vital workstream, and I am delighted that one of my first jobs as CEO is to discuss progress on what are known as the ‘Research 7’ at the AULRE conference next week.

Resourcing subject knowledge and expertise
In the late 1990s I also had my first contact with a CSTG (then Culham) consultant, Dick Powell. Dick was overseeing a project to promote centres of excellence for RE, I suppose it was a bit of a precursor for the RE Quality Mark www.reqm.org My school applied and became a designated centre. A couple of years later as I began work as an adviser in East London Dick contacted me to ask if I would work with a local school on a project with the BBC on Teaching Christianity with Key Stage 1. Providing resources and professional learning experiences related to subject knowledge, expertise and pedagogy are an essential element of CSTG strategy through for example RE:ONLINE, the Teach:RE courses and grant making.

Policy Change
Finally, teacher recruitment has always been on the CSTG agenda. In around 2002, Dick asked me to be involved with a project related to recruitment. The aim at the time was to create case studies showcasing teacher stories about what they loved about RE teaching. For the last few years I have run the Teach:RE courses for CSTG and increasingly used my role to lobby for Subject Knowledge Enhancement bursaries with NATRE and the RE Council, helping to bring about policy change. Working for continued policy change and taking forward the recommendations of the Commission on RE report are at the heart of CSTG objectives.

CSTG has impacted significantly on my career. As CEO I hope over the coming years that teachers across the country will be able to tell me how the Trust has made a difference to them too whether it be through networking, research, resourcing or policy change. I am looking forward to working with such a committed and dedicated RE community to transform our subject for this and future generations.

Culham St Gabriel’s Trust www.cstg.org.uk is a leading funder supporting excellence in RE through research, development and innovation. We work closely with teachers of RE, as well as organisations that promote the subject and offer high quality CPD.

In relation to the aspects that concern RE, CSTG welcomes the proposed new inspection framework. We see it as an opportunity to focus inspection teams on subject curriculum provision including RE, and to focus RE teachers on key aspects of high quality curriculum intent, improvement and impact. We look forward to Ofsted making judgements about whether a school is offering children the full curriculum for as long as possible, including RE. We will support partnership work to ensure that RE teachers rise to the challenge of a new inspection framework. Specifically, we very much welcome:

• The structure of curriculum intent, implementation and impact
• The emphasis on deep learning, cultural capital, long-term memory and progression
• The frequent mentions of ‘National Curriculum and RE’
• The inclusion of spiritual, moral, social and cultural development (SMSC).

We would also suggest that the framework could be further strengthened by:

• Making ‘National Curriculum and RE’ the phrase that is used every time, not just sometimes; and ensuring that ‘breadth and ambition’ should apply to RE as well as other subjects.
• Throughout the framework (eg 157, 162 and elsewhere), making a clear distinction between the ‘Ebacc’ as a metric and ‘subjects with academic rigour’. Ofsted is already aware that RE has suffered because the Ebacc is assumed in many schools to be a core of academically rigorous subjects. The new GCSE in RS, approved by the Minister of State, is academically rigorous and is not in the Ebacc. This has incentivized too many schools to narrow their curriculum in ways that are either unfeasible for RS, or illegal. We would invite Ofsted to consider a wording such as ‘Ebacc and RS’ in places.
• Having a more tightly defined method for identifying and challenging non-compliance in RE (see 43, 51 and elsewhere) and ensuring that complaints about non-compliance are known about in advance of the visit (this is not currently done).
• Ensuring that the guidance is clear on the duties of schools without a religious character (33). There is some text in the existing framework which has not been transferred over.
• Defining spiritual, moral, social and cultural development as not simply respect for different faiths, but also knowledge and understanding of different faiths and worldviews (204-207).

CSTG has already welcomed the publication in September 2018 of the final report from the Commission on RE and its proposed national entitlement statement https://www.commissiononre.org.uk/final-report-religion-and-worldviews-the-way-forward-a-national-plan-for-re/ . The entitlement is designed to overcome the known inequalities of delivery in RE, the product of a broken locally agreed syllabus system. A nation-wide definition of what every child should know and understand in RE is long overdue. Its facility as a measurement in schools could prove very useful, particularly for busy inspectors. We most warmly recommend that Ofsted’s new framework should reference the national entitlement statement and work with the National Association of Teachers of RE and the RE Council to enable inspectors to be familiar with the entitlement statement.

I’m delighted to announce that the Trustees have unanimously appointed Dr Kathryn Wright to be Chief Executive Officer of Culham St Gabriel’s Trust, starting on 1st May. Kathryn has served RE as a teacher, local authority and diocesan adviser, and lead consultant in charge of our TeachRE course, among many other achievements.

I know you’ll want to join me in welcoming this appointment. Kathryn brings great experience, skills and a long term vision for change and development in RE, along the lines envisioned by the Commission report. This is very, very good news for CSTG and for RE, and we all look forward to working with Kathryn.