After a brief consideration of the history of religious education in England and Wales, this paper analyses developments under three main headings: pupils, religions and methods, and suggests that changes can be seen in the light if variations revolving around these three areas. The paper then describes the design of a new RE syllabus for Anglican primary schools in Wales using a life-of-founder approach and recommends the advantages of this approach for wider use.

Keywords: elementary education, history, England and Wales (UK), RE curriculum, Anglican elementary schools

When Labour came to power in 1997 there was to be a new educational agenda. In their second term of office the Government decided to address the issue of religious schools, introducing a bill to allow schools with a religious character to be established rather more easily than had previously been the case. It is by no means clear what was, or is, meant by ‘schools with a religious character’. This article considers the implications of such a move from an Anglican perspective, since the Church of England is the biggest provider of voluntary schools, and asks what the implications are for the Church and its schools. It explores the possible consequences of the move to establish 100 new Church of England secondary schools on all schools, primary and secondary, and considers whether the Church has reflected sufficiently on the theological and ecclesiological implications of this policy.

Keywords: England, Church of England (Anglican), Labour Party, educational agenda, religious schools, government policy, elementary and secondary schools

Data gathered as part of a recent research project into the provision of collective worship in schools in England and Wales reveals the existence of a marked variation in approach and provision between schools in the primary and secondary sectors. Consequently, the point of transfer often becomes a watershed in pupils’ experience. This sudden change, which is most apparent in community schools, is accompanied by a slower but pre-existing transition in attitudes which is common to pupils in all types of institution. Using material gathered from interviews with young people, this article examines the issue of participation in school worship from the pupils’ perspective and analyses the reasons they give for their opposition to provision. It then compares these attitudes with those of a previous generation, as demonstrated in the work of Loukes (1961) and Goldman (1964, 1965) in order to explore the underlying changes which influence students’ thinking. It concludes with a consideration of the implications of these findings for practice and policy.

Keywords: collective worship, England and Wales, primary and secondary schools, attitudes about participation in school worship, comparison to previous generation, implications for the future

This study employs data from a survey of 33,982 adolescents between the ages of 13-15 throughout England and Wales to profile the distinctive identity of pupils attending Catholic secondary schools within the state maintained sector. Attention is drawn to four distinct communities of values within the Catholic school as defined by pupils who are active Catholics, sliding Catholics, lapsed Catholics and non-Catholics.

Keywords: Catholics, England and Wales (Great Britain), moral and religious values, adolescents, secondary school

Many small cultural and religious minorities are confronted with the problem of how to introduce their offspring into their own religious culture and values and at the same time to integrate into society. Often education is considered as the main tool to manage the problem. The historical case of the Dutch Jews and their perception of Jewish secondary education highlight the arguments in the shaky balance of integration and segregation. Coming from a situation in which Jews were set apart from society before 1850, they intended to integrate but at what price? This article uses source material from Jewish papers in which the discussion about Jewish secondary education dominated the contents from 1890 to 1928, the year in which the first Jewish secondary school was realised. The awareness of puberty as a dangerous age stimulated the discussion and underlined the old and new arguments in favour of their own secondary school as a matter of survival for Jewry. Why it took such a long time before the school was realised was mainly a consequence of the internal struggle between proponents and opponents, who both fostered the strong desire not to be set apart, but at the same time were worried about the increasing assimilation. This article explores to what extent the arguments were based on cultural and religious values and beliefs, and the way in which societal developments strengthened the points of view.

Keywords: Dutch Jewish secondary education, integration/segregation, minorities, history from 1850

To facilitate cross-cultural research in the psychology of religion, the reliability and validity of a Dutch translation of a seven-item short-form of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was examined among a sample 980 young people attending Catholic secondary schools within the state-maintained sector in the Netherlands. The data support the reliability and validity of the scale and commend it for further use among young people in the Netherlands.

Keywords: psychology of religion, the Netherlands, Catholic secondary schools, Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity

This study assesses the professional qualifications of Catholic high school religion teachers in the United States. Qualifications that are addressed include academic background, state certification, and teaching experience. Religion teacher data come from The Next Generation: A Study of Catholic High School Religion Teachers. Data for other teachers are drawn from the Schools and Staffing Survey, 1999-2000. The research findings suggest two major conclusions. First, Catholic high school religion teachers are less qualified than other public and private school teachers in terms of academic preparation, pedagogical training, and teaching experience. Second, new religion teachers are even less qualified overall than other religion teachers except that a significantly higher percentage of new teachers possess an advanced degree in the field.

Keywords: Catholicism, high school, professional qualifications, religion teachers

The paper presents an approach to teaching religious education (RE) in the secondary school (11-18) classroom in the UK based on Dewey’s conception of the community of enquiry and the role of the teacher as the mediator of experience. It draws upon empirical work in classrooms exploring the impact of the infusion of enquiry-based learning and thinking skills into the teaching of subject disciplines. Included in the paper is an illustrative case study of how practitioners implement approaches to teaching RE and their impact on pupil engagement. The effect of the approach on pupil learning and the teacher’s pedagogy and the implications for the subject discipline of RE are investigated. The paper draws upon collaborative action research projects undertaken in partnership with schools and Local Education Authorities in the North East of England and increasingly at a national level. Links will be made to international developments in the teaching of thinking skills and concerns for citizenship education. The central questions that are addressed are:

• The feasibility of a model of democratic teaching in the classroom;
• The contribution of RE to citizenship education.

This article continues my previous quantitative study in the Summer 2002 issue of this journal (Kallioniemi 2002). The aim is to investigate adult senior secondary school students’ concepts concerning religious education from a qualitative perspective.The study uses a phenomenography approach, which is based on focused theme interviews. All together 18 students were interviewed, 12 female and 6 male. The ages of students ranged from 17 to 70. After the interviews various categories were constructed. They were:

1. religious education as a subject of cultural knowledge;
2. religious education as a deeper view of life; and
3. religious education as an instrumental subject.

The role of head teachers in the formation and transmission of values within schools has long been viewed as pivotal. At a time when the place of faith schools, as part of state funded educational provision, is openly questioned, this paper reports on a small-scale study of the views that four head teachers have of their place in their school’s values framework. Special reference is made to the formation of values and to their communication. The expression of these values is then examined within special reference to their application in the context of school admissions policies. It is then suggested that some critiques of church schools adopt an oversimplistic approach and that there is no one overarching understanding of what it means to be a Church of England school.

Keywords: Anglican secondary schools, headteachers, state-funded faith schools, teachers' place in their schools' value frameworks