The Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education
(SACRE) is a County Council committee
and its purpose is to advise the County Council, as the Local
Education Authority (LEA), on all matters related to collective
worship and religious education (RE) in community, voluntary
controlled, trust schools and foundation schools without a
religious character. Academies, Free schools & Voluntary-Aided
schools lie outside the SACRE remit, but a good SACRE will try to
establish links with any of these schools in its’
area.
In each local authority, SACRE’s role is
to:
• advise the LEA
on matters relating to RE and collective worship in community
schools and some other schools.
• oversee RE and
collective worship within the authority: advise on methods of
teaching, choice of materials and provision of teacher
training.
• require a
review of the
LEA Agreed Syllabus (by law every 5 years).
• monitor RE,
collective worship and spiritual, moral, social, and cultural
development. SACRE is also responsible for
“determinations” – deciding whether a particular
school can change collective worship away from the current
requirement to be “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian
character”.
• produce an
Annual
Report which is submitted to the Department for Education (DfE)
and the National Association for Standing Advisory Councils on
Religious Education (NASACRE).
West Sussex
SACRE meets three times a year and is made up of four statutory
groups and co-opted members:
• Committee A:
Christian denominations and other religions and their
denominations, reflecting the principal religious traditions of the
area (and specified in the SACRE’s constitution)
• Committee B:
Church of England, with representatives nominated by the
diocese
• Committee C:
Teacher and headteacher associations invited by the LEA
• Committee D:
Local Education Authority - ideally reflecting the range of
political viewpoints across the area. This group may include
representative of school governing bodies.
It is the
responsibility of the Local Education Authority to provide funding
and clerking to enable the group to function and ensure that
minutes and agendas are made public.
Further
information is available through the NASACRE website.
The LEA
works with SACRE to:
• track and
review the provision of RE and collective worship.
• consider with
SACRE any action that needs to be taken in respect of support
offered to schools.
The latest
version of the Agreed Syllabus was produced in 2021 and is to be
revised in 2026. SACRE has a development plan and in 2023 intends
to host 2 “Religions and World faiths Roadshows”. One
to be held in Chichester the other near Horsham. The aim of this is
to promote contact and dialogue between school practitioners in
relation to support and resources available from their local faith
communities. SACRE has also produced a Primary and Secondary School
Questionnaire to support a review of RE and CW provision across the
Local Education Authority which will provide evidence to begin
evaluating the current Agreed Syllabus. This will be circulated to
schools late September 2023.
Background
SACREs have
their origins in the 1944 Education Act when the government
established Local Education Authorities to maintain schools. One of
their responsibilities was to establish a ‘conference’
to produce an agreed syllabus. Such a conference was to be
established each time a local education authority believed that it
needed the syllabus to be reviewed. A local education authority
could also establish a ‘Standing Advisory Council on
Religious Education (SACRE)’ if it thought it was appropriate
in its local context. These SACREs were not mandatory and not all
local education authorities had one.
SACREs were
later reformed and reconstituted by the Education Reform Act of
1988, when they became permanent bodies with legal powers. The
first SACRE meeting to be held in West Sussex was in
1983.
Contact
information: Karen Hammond
(External Advisor) on 07717 776696. Email:
karenhammond2018@gmail.com