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Hello! My name is Taylor Hatch, and I am delighted to have recently joined the team at Culham St Gabriel’s where I will be working as the new Communications Officer. Having worked in the public sector for the last few years I am very well versed in the world of communications – I am passionate about connecting with others and building relationships that create meaningful impact. I also graduated from The University of Manchester with an undergraduate degree in Religions and Theology, and I am always eager to integrate this knowledge and understanding when interacting with others.

I was always conscious that a degree in theology and career in comms may never perfectly align – no doubt the skills I gained in both fields have been of utmost use to me – however, I realised that the chances of finding a role which directly linked the two together would be scarce. This soon changed when an opportunity to work for Culham St Gabriel’s arose, I couldn’t have been more wrong! It seemed as though the stars had aligned and created this job especially for me.

I am so excited to be taking up this role and to be a part of an organisation who is just as passionate about the Religion and Worldviews curriculum as I am. From first-hand experience I can confidently say that an education in Religion and Worldviews sparks imagination, curiosity, and exploration… and I want everyone to know about it! Not only within the immediate world of RE professionals but I am also eager to spread this message to the public, policy makers, and other influencers.

Working in comms provides me with a sense of purpose and motivates me to connect with other like-minded people. Ultimately, no one day is the same and we must dig deep to understand our audiences and to effectively make change. I accept this challenge with open arms.

I am particularly looking forward to creating a new comms strategy, as I can fully immerse myself in the needs, mission, and priorities of the Trust. Relationship building is also an integral part of my role, and I am eager to network with our trustees and stakeholders to help shape the impact of the Trust.

I hope this brief introduction has perfectly encapsulated my enthusiasm! If you would like to get to know me a little better or throw some ideas around, please do not hesitate to contact me: taylor@cstg.org.uk

Finance and Administration Officer

• Annual Salary, £28,000 pro rata
• Permanent, Part-Time (0.5 FTE, 17.5 hours per week)
• 25 days annual leave, bank holidays and four discretionary days leave pro rata
• 10% Employer Pension Contribution
• Home-based with flexible working options

Culham St Gabriel’s Trust is an endowed charitable foundation whose vision is for a broad-based, critically reflective education in religion and worldviews contributing to a well-informed, respectful, and open society. The Trust is committed to providing teachers of religion and worldviews and other professionals with the support, connections, challenges and professional development they need.

We are looking for an experienced Part-Time Finance and Administration Officer to maintain accurate financial records and reporting mechanisms as well as supporting the wider work of the Trust. We are seeking a well-organised and self-motivated team player who will use their own initiative and be adaptable to the needs of the organisation.

The successful candidate will join a small, friendly staff team. We have recently become a remote working organisation, meeting regularly online for team meetings, and in person about once a month. We would expect the successful candidate to split their hours over a minimum of three days each week, but they could be split over four or five days.

Closing date: Wednesday 20th September at 12 noon

A place to believe in, this is the strapline of Greenbelt. Greenbelt’s mission is to create spaces, like festivals, where art, faith and justice come together. This is primarily expressed through their annual festival, now in its 50th year, over the August Bank Holiday weekend. A week ago we were packing down our Culham St Gabriel’s ‘takeaway’ tent where we promoted the work of the Trust with festival goers. As the term ‘takeaway’ implies exhibitors are not just there to share their work, but to galvanise support and action, and above all make a difference.

Culham St Gabriel’s aimed to connect with audiences who didn’t already know about the Trust. We had two key themes, the first was that everyone has a view on the world, connecting with Greenbelt’s focus on inclusion, diversity and dialogue. The second was the importance and value of learning about religion and non-religion linking to Greenbelt’s emphasis on questioning, exploring and curiosity.

We had a great time!

We engaged with many festival goers who we would not normally have interacted with including governors, community workers, other charities, students as well as teachers of all different subjects. Many people just wanted to talk about religion and worldview literacy. Some people had lots of questions. Other people were just curious. Lots of people could see how their own story connected with the work of the Trust, and how they might go on to make a difference in their context.

When asked about the importance of an education in religion and worldviews, this is what some people shared…

• To provide a space and opportunity to think beyond ourselves, build community and promote inclusivity
• To help us engage in respectful dialogue and co-operation with people from different backgrounds
• To prepare children for living in a diverse, multi-cultural society without ignorance
• To understand human connections from past-future and to remain open-minded about differing opinions to oneself

Some highlights for me, were young people (and some older people!) giving ‘shout outs’ for their RE teachers, having an in depth conversation with someone leading on religious literacy within the NHS context, and meeting new early career primary teachers who didn’t know where to find help to teach RE until we chatted to them! There were so many amazing conversations, and they were all united around the importance of our vision – to contribute to a well-informed, respectful, open society.

Would we go back? YES, definitely!

I’d like to express huge thanks to friends and colleagues who supported us over the whole weekend – providing meals, making tea/coffee, volunteering on our stand, welcoming us to join them for the Sunday morning celebration or simply just saying ‘hi’! THANKYOU!

To find out more about Greenbelt:
https://www.greenbelt.org.uk/greenbelt-festival/about-greenbelt/#what-is-greenbelt

Recruitment challenges mean schools are now struggling to offer the subject at A level after decades of growth in entries

Religious Studies A level exam entries have decreased by 3.5 percent in England and 24 percent in Wales.

The fall comes as the overall number of A level entries in England and Wales increased this year by 2 percent from 812,124 in 2022 to 830,312 in 2023.

14,690 students took an RS A level in England in 2023 compared with 15,216 in 2022, while in Wales entries were recorded at 748, a fall from 982.

A level entries for RS also fell last year by 2.7 percent, despite a 6.1% increase in 2021. Between 2003 and 2022, A level RS has been one of the fastest growing subjects at A level, with an increase of 39 percent in the number of entries to the subject.

The fall follows the launch of a campaign to recruit a new generation of RE teachers to the subject, with the Religious Education Council of England and Wales warning that a shortage in specialist teachers means some schools, particularly in the Midlands and North East, are now struggling to offer the subject at A level.

A level Religious Studies is the humanity most likely to be taken by disadvantaged pupils. Research by the FFT Education Datalab has found that this group is twice as likely to choose to study A level Religious Studies than their peers.

Sarah Lane Cawte, Chair of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales (REC), said:
“These results show the really concerning impact that teacher retention and recruitment is having on the subject. For the last two decades, A level Religious Studies has been a success story with growing numbers of entries and impressive results that have opened up a world of opportunity, particularly for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, providing them with access to top universities and careers in law, journalism and teaching.
“That legacy is now threatened. A teacher training bursary and a fair allocation of resources to the subject would help reverse this trend and ensure RE continues to thrive as it has done for the last decades.”

Katie Freeman, Chair of the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE), said:
“Despite this dip in entries, A level RS continues to be a very popular choice at A level, being both personally enriching and intellectually challenging. RS A level teachers are highly trained professionals, managing classroom debates on sensitive ethical and theological issues that continue to inform the modern world.
“To be in a situation where students are not able to take Religious Studies at an advanced level is a real travesty, denying many young people an opportunity to partake in a subject that has opened up a world of opportunities in higher education, their personal lives and the world of work.”

The key outcomes of the 2023 A level results in England and Wales for Religious Studies are as follows:

• 15,438 RS A level entries were recorded in England and Wales, a decline of 4.5 percent from 2022
• There were 39 percent more A level entries for RS in England and Wales than in 2003 (11,132 entries were recorded in 2003).

Thinking time is extremely valuable. One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed travelling again post-Covid pandemic, particularly by train, is that it gives me thinking and reading time. One of the key themes which has exercised my mind over the last 12 months is a ‘religion and worldviews approach’. I thought I’d write a short reflective piece about how I see things in relation to this as we approach the end of this academic year.

Thought One: Clarifying a religion and worldviews approach

I’ve noticed in the last year that some commentators have been contracting the new approach proposed in the Commission on RE (2018) and subsequent publications such as the RE Council Draft Resource (2022) from ‘religion and worldviews’ to just ‘worldviews’. I think we need to reclaim the phrase ‘religion and worldviews approach’

Key to a ‘religion and worldviews approach’ is the study of religion. Exploring religion as a concept; the nature of religion itself. Alongside this, contrasting the concept of religion with, for example, the concept of worldview, or spirituality or a belief system, examining the different ways in which these complex categories are understood and interpreted. Using examples from religions to exemplify and illustrate. This is an important element of a religion and worldviews approach and seems to have got a little missed in discourse over the last 12 months. The emphasis has been on the following two aspects:

• Increasing the diversity of content within religious worldview traditions
• Including content about non-religious worldviews

These two important elements focus rightly on diversity of religious and non-religious worldviews as content. However, content is only one aspect of this new approach as I will explain below. An emphasis on these two aspects misses some of the key points about a shift towards religion and worldviews.

Over the last few months I have also become more self-aware in relation to my own reflections. I have acknowledged to myself (and to others) that I personally sit within a world religions paradigm, this is what I have grown up with. My initial understanding of a religion and worldviews approach was focused more on how we frame content to the expense of other aspects of the new paradigm. It was revisiting my own doctoral thesis focusing on pedagogy that helped me to see this more clearly.

Thought Two: Balancing pedagogical and curriculum changes

So, my understanding of the shifting paradigm is that it has both a pedagogical and curriculum turn. This is why I think to call it a religion and worldviews approach is appropriate. If we were to call it simply a hermeneutical approach (which some have suggested) I think this loses the curricular turn that is required. If we are simply to call it ‘religion and worldviews’ without the word ‘approach’, then I think we lose the pedagogical turn. Therefore, I think calling it a religion and worldviews approach is helpful.

In pedagogical terms, my understanding is that a religion and worldviews approach focuses on:

• A hermeneutical approach; a focus on learning as an interpretative endeavour
• Intellectual humility and dialogic approaches
• Reflexivity; examining one’s own beliefs, attitudes, motives and reactions.
• Wise, critical interpretation; importance of epistemic literacy
• Acknowledging intentionally the place of personal knowledge/positionality

CoRE References par 2, 6, 7, 12, 23-27
CoRE References, page 4 what is a worldview?

This means building on the work of people such as Bob Jackson, and more recently Martha Shaw. Shaw talks about interpretability, reflexivity and transformational encounter as the key foci for a religion and worldviews approach. My own PhD thesis (2018) puts forward a very similar approach to pedagogy.

In curriculum terms, a religion and worldviews approach takes seriously:

• Lived authentic experience of religious and non-religious worldviews; a focus on and beginning with people
• Diversity of belief and practice; divergence within and between organised worldview traditions
• Understanding of conceptual categories e.g religion, worldview, spirituality
• Continuity and change within religious and non-religious worldview traditions
• Context within which religious and non-religious worldview traditions are shaped and practiced
• Different ways of knowing (disciplinarity) e.g theological, philosophical, historical, social science (connected to epistemic literacy)

CoRE references paragraphs 9, 10,11, 12, 13, 30-37, 45
CoRE references, pages 12-13 National Entitlement Statement, pages 72-77 Appendix 2

In many ways the substantive content has already changed over the last 5-10 years. Non-religious worldviews have been included for many years, and more recently increasing awareness of diversity within organised worldview traditions has been recognised. However, a worldviews approach calls for a different framing of this content. This is where the work of David Lewin and his team may be helpful. The focus in David’s work is on exemplar content being chosen for educational purposes. Exemplars are chosen to illustrate a larger principle or idea. A teacher chooses an exemplar to ‘open up the child to the world’. This moves away from the notion of ‘coverage’ of world religions, to a new way of framing content. The work of Jan McGuire and Barnet SACRE using the work of Ann Taves may also be very useful here. In our Culham St Gabriel’s subject knowledge courses, we tentatively suggest a people, places, actions as a possible framing for substantive content, with disciplinary questions framing the organisation of this content. This is quite different to previous ways of framing the curriculum.

In many ways this disciplinary framing sits underneath the pedagogical and curriculum turn, as foundations for both aspects. I’ve summarised this in the following table:

Thought Three: A religion and worldviews approach aligns well with promoting Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB)

In the last year I have spent much time considering FoRB and education. I’ve had the privilege of working with teachers and consultants to explore how we can promote and protect FoRB with primary age children. At its core, a religion and worldviews approach centres around how religious and non-religious people encounter, interpret, understand and engage with the world. This approach is comfortable with ideas of pluralism, better reflecting the complex societies in which individuals live and therefore more likely to be able to provide “positive and accurate information about different faith and belief communities”. In addition, the approach places emphasis on responsible hermeneutics, intellectual humility and wise interpretation supporting a pedagogy which aligns well with FoRB principles. Furthermore, a religion and worldviews approach, is well placed to be able to emphasize “the benefits of pluralism and the importance of human rights, including freedom of religion or belief”. Consequently, the global network of scholars and educators working on developing new approaches to the teaching of religion and belief are well placed to be partners for the promotion and protection of FoRB in schools. This aspect to me is an important consideration going forward as we contemplate pedagogy and curricula in schools.

A final thought

So I believe we need to keep on thinking. I know my thoughts change and shift; yet over the last year I think I have more clarity in my own thinking. We need to be open to one another, to listen, to learn, to reflect. This has been the joy of in-person gatherings this year. Perhaps the summer holidays provide some time for refreshment, renewal and further thinking…

 

References:
https://www.commissiononre.org.uk/

https://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/rec/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/REC-Worldviews-Project-double-pages-Revised-cover-v1.2.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-religion-or-belief-and-education-statement-at-the-international-ministerial-conference-2022/statement-on-freedom-of-religion-or-belief-and-education

Details of grant funded projects mentioned can be found here

Fixed Term: Finance and Administration Officer

Reports to: Chief Executive
Hours of Work: 14 hours per week (flexible working possible)
Location: Home based
Salary: £15 per hour
Fixed Term: 3rd July 2023 to 31st December 2023 (possibility to extend)
Paid Holiday Entitlement: Statutory

Culham St Gabriel’s Trust is an endowed charitable foundation whose vision is for a broad-based, critically reflective education in religion and worldviews contributing to a well-informed, respectful and open society. For more information about the Trust please visit www.cstg.org.uk and our website for educational professionals www.reonline.org.uk

We are recruiting a temporary Finance and Administration Officer to maintain our financial health and support the work of the Trust during a time of organisational transition.

We are looking for a well organised and self-motivated team player, who will use their own initiative and be adaptable to the needs of our organisation. The ideal candidate will nurture positive relationships with our partners and funding award holders.

The successful candidate will join a small, friendly staff team. We have recently become a remote working organisation and meet regularly online for team meetings. You will work closely with our Digital Manager and with the Chief Executive. This staff team also works with several self-employed consultants who lead some of the Trust’s programmes.

It is hard to believe I’ve now been in my role at Culham St Gabriel’s for four years. Interestingly, this last 12 months will have been my first without a Covid Lockdown to contend with! As I reflect, one thing stands out to me – how incredibly passionate the religion and worldviews community is. One of the greatest joys I have is working with such enthusiastic people both within and outside of the Trust. Last Friday the leadership programme steering group met together to review applications, I wasn’t the only one who said it was one of the highlights of their year!!

Our vision is for a broad-based, critical and reflective education in religion and worldviews contributing to a well-informed, respectful and open society.

Our vision is ambitious, we want to transform society through education and we can’t achieve this on our own. This is why the word ‘contributing’ is so important. We work alongside other organisations, funders, grantees and scholars. Together I believe we are making a difference and I reflect on a few things here, but there is still much work to do.

1. Promoting positive public perception of an education in religion and worldviews
   Our two Savanta ComRes commissioned surveys has shown us that most of the general public do have a positive public perception of the subject. So our work has been focused on utilising this through a series of promotional films, as well as developing our understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion and its relevance particularly in relation to religion or belief. This has led us to work with the business sector and those engaged in interfaith work.
2. Influencing government policy in supporting religion and worldviews, including the recommendations of the Commission on RE (2018)
   We have worked closely with the RE Policy Unit to campaign for several of the recommendations. These include funding of recruitment, maintaining the subject knowledge enhancement courses for RE, and calling for a National Plan. In addition, we have been increasingly promoting freedom of religion or belief (Article 18) and developing projects in this area.
3. Advocating for the importance of a high-quality education in religion and worldviews within the education world
   One of the highlights this year for me has been establishing senior educationalists focus group who are working with me to unpack and explore the wider context in which our work sits. This has been very insightful, and I’m grateful to those who volunteer to take part.
4. Developing excellent leadership and teaching of religion and worldviews
   Setting up our new e-learning platform and reimagining our scholarship programmes has been extremely rewarding over the last couple of years. Our e-learning platform has around 1000 people registered with hundreds of teachers completing one or more of our free courses. Alumni from many of our scholarship programmes have moved on to undertake doctoral research or take on regional or national leadership roles for the subject. Establishing RExChange as a researcher-practitioner knowledge exchange conference also stands out to me as a highlight.
5. Facilitating the Religion and Worldviews community to work more cohesively.
   It has been such a pleasure to work with many steering groups, executives and with groups of funders. Online meetings have certainly helped to bring people together more frequently, but I do miss sometimes the in-person chat over coffee! Last year a chance conversation between four colleagues in a car between conference venues led to the Trust piloting a secondary mentoring programme in partnership with AULRE… I wonder what this year’s chance conversations will bring….

In this short blog I’ve offered a few reflections on our current strategy (2020-2023) which has recently been reviewed and evaluated by the trustees. I know I have not mentioned everything! There is far too much!! Later this summer we will be sharing some revised (but similar) strategic objectives and we hope you will want to continue to partner with us as we work together to fulfil our vision for a well-informed, respectful, open society.

If you’re interested in reading a review of our work last year, please see our annual report

On Saturday I’m undertaking my first Ultra Challenge walk. Its only 25km but I’ve been training for it over the last three months. Having a history of injury, I decided to focus on whole body training – cardio, flexibility and strength – to hopefully mitigate against any major aches or pains!! I’ve also signed up with two friends, and we’ve been tracking each other’s progress on Strava for the last few months. It’s been a great focus; I like having something to aim towards. I find it really motivating.

Importance of goals

Having goals and working towards them is something that transcends more than just my physical activity each week. As an organisation we have five strategic objectives and each year a series of short-term goals sit under these to help us work towards our vision. It means that even some of the more ‘mundane’ tasks can be viewed within the bigger picture; each aspect of our work contributing to the whole. This is very motivating as every element of our work helps us achieve our goals, but also means we can measure our impact. For those who have just applied to our leadership programme we asked, ‘Where do you see yourself professionally in 5 years’ time?’ It is good to look forward, to dream…

A full workout

Like ongoing physical training, we need to keep ourselves agile, building strength and endurance. This means exercising ourselves in different ways – reading blogs and articles, doing one of our e-learning courses perhaps, talking to others or reading a piece of research. For those who have just applied to our leadership programme we asked, ‘What was the last educational article/book you read and what impact has it had on you professionally?’ How might you answer this question? Or consider perhaps when you last chatted to someone about what happened in your classroom, or how you have structured your curriculum.

A team effort

Supporting and encouraging one another is vital. We work with a significant number of people through our trustees, consultants, grantees, other funders, and partner organisations. Having common aims about the importance of an education in religion and worldviews helps us to work collaboratively and more effectively with our partners. In addition, our all our scholarship programmes have a community of practice which support and nurture conversation between participants to help everyone find their voice in the religion and worldviews eco-system! I’m looking forward to the RE Hubs website being launched soon as another way of bringing people together as well as signposting to professional development.

So think about your goals, consider your training and network with others. I shall report back on my walking challenge, but I’m already keen to sign up for another one in September to keep the motivation going…

A review of our work in 2021-22
Our e-learning courses
Our research area
Our scholarship programmes
If you’re interested in an Ultra Challenge

Parliamentarians and faith and belief groups join calls to attract a new generation of teachers to the subject

A campaign to attract a new generation of RE teachers has kicked off with teaching groups, religious organisations and parliamentarians stressing the importance of the subject for preparing students for life in modern Britain.

As of January, UCAS data show that teacher recruitment for all subjects is down 22% from last year. However RE stands out, being down a third of applicants from the last recruitment cycle.

Government inaction over recruiting teachers to RE has been blamed. The Department for Education (DfE) has so far missed its target for the recruitment of RE teachers in nine of the last ten years.

Despite this year’s fall in applicants, the subject continues to grow in popularity. Over the last five years entries to the GCSE have stood around an average of 250,000 with entries to the full course GCSE rising by 30% over the last decade.

The recruitment campaign – entitled ‘Beyond the Ordinary’ – draws attention to the academic and knowledge rich approach of the subject to life’s big questions, and will seek to attract a set of talented graduates up to the task of getting young people to grips with the complex nature of modern belief.

Kathryn Wright, Chief Executive Officer of Culham St Gabriel’s Trust, which is supporting the campaign, said: “Religious education is an important curriculum subject enabling children and young people to navigate our complex multi religious, multi secular society. Everyone has a worldview, and it’s important we prepare young people to become free thinking, critical participants in public discourse, who can make informed judgements about matters of religion or belief and reflect meaningfully on the big questions in life.”

We are looking for ambitious graduates from a range of humanities and social science subjects who can deliver an academic and rigorous curriculum aimed at getting young people to think critically about their own beliefs and those of others.”

Last March, the Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley MP hosted a roundtable on the future of the subject. In October, a Westminster Hall Debate saw MPs and Peers from across the House agree on its importance for life in modern Britain as well as express concern around a lack of government support for the subject.

Lord Karan Bilimoria said: “The latest teacher recruitment figures are deeply worrying. Parents are concerned, schools are concerned and so too the young people are missing out.

“As a Champion for RE, I’ve heard numerous times from students that this is one of the few times in the classroom where they get to say what they think about the world around them. At present we face doing a disservice to a generation of young people ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of belief in Britain and the world beyond. This campaign is about getting the best humanities graduates into the classroom to help them deliver a modern RE curriculum reflective of belief in our society.”

Teacher training courses are open to graduates from a range of academic disciplines and from all sorts of diverse backgrounds, with Subject Knowledge Enhancement courses available from schools, universities or other providers.

Anyone looking for more information about training to be a RE teacher should visit https://cstg.org.uk/campaigns/teacher-recruitment/becoming-a-teacher

As we celebrate World Book Day 2023, I thought I’d share a few reflections on one of my favourite books. It was written some time ago, but I only came across it a few months ago. I had clearly missed out! The book is The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul by Deborah Rodriguez.

It’s a book about real women. I like a book where there are authentic characters, people I feel I can connect with in some way. Although set in a completely different part of the world, one of the most dangerous places on earth, I felt I could identify with different aspects of the women. I warmed to their sense of justice, their ‘can-do’ mentality and that anything was possible. Sunny, the café proprietor’s, generous hospitality to anyone who strolls through her café doors is inspiring.

It’s a book about inter-connectedness. The lives of five different women are inter-woven in a time of conflict and disruption. They form a unique bond which changes each of them in different ways. Although from very different backgrounds, the women come together in the face of adversity and learn to appreciate and celebrate one another’s diverse experiences of life. Bonds of sisterhood are important to me personally, and it was great to read a novel which placed this at the heart.

It’s a book about hope. One must remember this is a work of fiction, it is not based on a true story. However, the theme of hope runs through this book. A hope that things can and do change. It brought beliefs and values to the forefront, explored them, and showed how when they are put into action lives can be transformed. Let’s hope one day this cannot just be a work of fiction but can become a living reality.

This is a vibrant, colourful book where I was transported to a different culture. It is emotionally challenging in places as the ongoing oppression of women forms a thread throughout the book. It is a powerful story and makes one value one’s own freedom.