THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE

During the last five years, as a nation we have been shaken to the core.

COVID was hugely unsettling in the speed and unpredictability of its impact on individual and family life, and on work routines. Distress and hurt were widely felt. Our sense of interdependence was heightened. We clapped for those working in the NHS.

Russian invasion of the Ukraine disturbed our sense of safety. We’d come to take for granted that there was generally peace in the world. This wasn’t actually true, but such open conflict as existed was out of the headlines and outside of Europe. Now, every day TV pictures of bombed houses and homes in places that could have been here in the UK were shocking. We clapped by sending material support and offering refuge.

Then the death of the Queen. Not unexpected because of her age and visible weakening, but new in the scale of public response. Whilst not unanimous, the widespread of flowers and silences for past service, of the throngs and the anthem singing for future hope, have been astonishing. Symbolically, the elaborate rituals of mourning and celebration were affirming and cherishing of what matters most to us. Perhaps, even a sensing that the monarch’s beliefs and values are at the heart of the democratic constitutional life of both Britain and the Commonwealth?

To cap these three, there comes running the impact of climate change. Where once was doubt that any threat was distant, there’s now increasing recognition that it’s arriving, it’s making a massive difference both within our country and world-wide, and its effects which we are already experiencing are titchy in terms of what are very soon to hit.

All told the fate we face is profoundly existential. There is a shaking of our human foundations comparable to those during and immediately after the World War 2. Reaction then inspired the foundation of the NHS and also of the extended Education Service. The latter has not been clappingly acknowledged, but is no less deserving in appreciation of the demands on teachers during and continuing from the impact of the COVID context on so many children and young people.

It’s the 1944 Education Act that I’d like to use as a springboard for moving forward from our present condition. I’m not thinking about its desirable principle of extending the age range of education for all from age14 to 15; we’ve gone beyond that to 16 – and latterly even to the education-leaving age of 18. Nor am I thinking of its equal valuing of academic and technical educational provision – we've a way to go, but at last Further Education is beginning to attract comparable funding to Sixth Form and Higher Education.

I’m thinking rather of the deliberate curriculum priority given to beliefs and values. Though not specified in detailed legal elaboration, the teaching curriculum was legally affirmed. But only beliefs and values were specifically identified as obligatory for all – they were called Religious Education, comprising the teaching part – Religious Instruction (RI) + the ethos part – Collective Worship (CW). And they were rooted in local consultation not decreed from on high. The special status given to them was in direct response to the centralised captivation by Nazi and Communist ideologies. Boys and girls deserved different groundwork, and this was made compulsory, but subject to local agreement as to its contentious contents. Even then, in acknowledgement of the principle of ‘believers’ freedom’, it was the only aspect of the school curriculum which any parents had the right to opt out their children from. CW was to be emphatically collective - different from corporate worship on the part of a single denominational community - in acknowledgement of the different religious starting points of individual pupils and teachers.

Nearly eighty years on from this 1944 Act, school provision and experience have developed enormously, yet the force of this primary legislation remains technically in place. Its major overhaul was in the 1988 Education Reform Act, but once again the beliefs and values part remained central – and categorised as ‘Basic’ - even more fundamental than the new National Curriculum. Given the changed social and academic context, there was a steer for local syllabus development to acknowledge other ‘principal religions of the UK’ alongside Christianity. They weren’t named, but even back in 1975 the others were becoming identified as Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh. (Later in 2004, the permissive National Framework for RE explicitly drew attention to the relevance of humanism and secular philosophies in this context, as well as other minority faiths.) And CW - never labelled as Christian in 1944 and more commonly referred to as school assembly – was now expressly specified as ‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’, along with the need for sensitivity to ‘age, aptitude and family background’. This envisioned ‘Christian breadth’ in at least half of a school’s provision, as well as opportunity to give recognition to openness to other convictional starting points and complementary expressions of significance for those participating.

The thrust of the law remains, but the reality in practice doesn’t. The RE teaching component is very thin in half of secondary schools and academies, and, though better in primary settings, is widely neglected in teacher education. CW and assemblies on the part of the whole school, or section of it, are rarely daily, and in secondaries evidence of CW is often very hard to find. The fault of this lies in the lack of preparation for them within any level of teacher education and training and the absence of any national development projects that demonstrate the potential of imaginative programmes of provision. Professional uncertainty along with personal hesitation regarding religious beliefs on the part of senior management have given little incentive to make this a priority. And the recent tendency of Ofsted to look the other way in this regard has seemed to suggest that’s ok.

But it’s not ok, for the following reasons:

• there's a larger context: contention over beliefs and national ideologies are at the root of warfare

• the principle of democratic freedom is under threat in the USA, Russia and China; there is need and opportunity for it to be reaffirmed in the UK and Commonwealth

• what lies behind this principle needs to be fathomed in the educational experience of every child and young person; education is hollow-centred unless it has deepest and broadest beliefs and values at heart

• teachers deserve to know that their worth as genuine companions in personal meaning-making is fully appreciated by politicians and administrators as well as parents and guardians.

My strategy for addressing these challenges is to develop a programme to rework the professional understanding of collective worship and school assemblies. During COVID I imagined this as Community Clapping. I used it as a translation of CW for the following reasons:

• across a socially diverse nation, people clapped for doctors, nurses and all who are working in the national health service

• clapping was a show of approval and gratitude for the energies, personal dedication and commitment involved

• it was a collective response expressed towards individuals and towards a fundamental feature of British life – not only British, but notably so

• showing appreciation of value and worth is a human given; it may not be fully fledged worship, but in depth of feeling it’s akin to it.

We do have a language problem with the word ‘worship’, as also with ‘religion’, Both can be given concretised definition and restricted to institutionalised versions. At the same time, however, they can each be understood as generically human expressions and responses. They have to do with personal sense of meaning and purpose in living and life, most especially in their deepest, most far-reaching terms. They take on particularised forms – as in Buddhist, Christian, Humanist, Muslim and others’ terms – but they are aboriginally universal human experience. These antedate any of the written traditions – as affirmed by archaeologists (see Timothy Insoll (ed) The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion). They also flourish in experience outside what’s commonly named in terms of institutional religious belonging (see Ninian Smart World Philosophies).

Even the term Christian can be overly constricted and understood in exclusively denominational terms. Lost then is its Biblical vision, concerning ‘the whole inhabited world’, re-emphasised in the twentieth century ecumenical movement and reflected in the inclusive vision of the World Council of Churches www.oikoumene.org. It’s important to realise that the 1988 Act’s ‘broadly Christian’ is no less openly inclusive.

The RE subject teaching tradition has been in the process of continuing regeneration since 1944. With the current projected reworking as Religion and World Views much more is promised and already in evidence in schools that acknowledge this curriculum responsibility. But in terms of whole school experience, most expressly in secondary settings, there has been only limited development. The potential scope afforded by the 1988 wording has been largely ignored, with the assumption remaining that Collective Worship must have only narrow meaning. As a result, children and young people, students and teachers are missing opportunity to join together in explorations and celebrations of shared meanings.

Before endeavouring to seek funding to promote any national redevelopment programme for such an enriched provision, it has made sense to test its feasibility at a local level. Accordingly, encouraged by the University of Cumbria Institute of Education, the local SACRE was approached to seek its approval for the programme along with their commending of it for consideration by Cumbrian headteachers. This was given, as was subsequent support from individual primary and secondary teachers and headteachers, but that was as far as it went. There is reluctance on the part of secondary heads to take on any major new commitment. They know that their schools and teachers are currently too stretched from existing demands to be ready to engage with an initiative which would add yet more.

It seems evident that any forward move along these lines will require external funding which would incentivise at least a small number of schools to engage in a fully sequenced year-long educational experiment.

Accordingly, this is a relaunch of the initiative, with a re-cast context and a new title. The change in context arises from the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the succession of Charles III. This has brought to the surface reflections about the distinctive nature of our national identity as a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. The title Commonwealthing picks up on the political shift from a Commonwealth of Nations styled imperially as British to one which is openly inclusive and self-governing. And it also uses word play to draw attention to wealth as more than financial currency; rather as the economy of commonly shared and re-generated humanity. What can we best do together? What collectively in schools would be both timely and enriching for all concerned – students, teachers and parents?