The English Baccalaureate

Towards the end of last year, I discovered something that would be effecting education in the UK in an extremely strong way - the English Baccalaureate (or, as I'll shorten it to in the rest of this post, the 'EBacc').  I'm not going to discuss the debate as to whether the EBacc is good or bad on the whole, or whether it'll replace the 5 A* - C measure in this post, but I'm going to discuss - yes, you guessed it - what the EBacc means for RE.

In this EBacc, there is a list of subjects that all students are recommended to take - as expected, school's are now forcing students into these pathways in their GCSE pathways. The subjects - including subjects such as a science and a language - involved a recommendation of studying a humanities subject. Fine, right? Well, not really... In the EBacc, a humanity is History or Geography - what happened to RE? I'm asking the same question. You don't need to study RE at depth to realise that it's a humanities subject. If you're interested enough to see, the following video will demonstrate this:

This video was something I specifically made to demonstrate to people what RE is. Think about the questions in this video. Are they not questions that compliment, if not surpass, history or geography's exploration of humanity and its impact upon Earth?

According to Wikipedia, the definition for a humanities subject is as follows:

"The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural science."

Let's pull this apart. "... that studies the human condition" - well, in RE, you learn about poverty, materialism (amongst other philosophies of life), the impact humans have upon the planet in global warming, and how humans discern between right and wrong. "... using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative" - in my RE lessons at Bishop Challoner Catholic College, we're always taught that if you do not critically analyse your opinion, just how strong of a belief is it? I personally strive to constantly question my morals and ideas - so, check, that's in the humanities sector. To speculate, however, is something different. Speculating is to form an opinion without solid proof - sound familiar? I'd say that religion is a pretty good example of this! So, to fit Wikipedia's definition (and thus, society's, as Wikipedia is entirely created by the online community of people!) RE seems to be a sound example of a humanity. 

I ask you to think - again! - about the RE curriculum. In year 7, I did a topic called "What's the Meaning of Life?", where we learned about different philosophies of life, of both religious and non-religious people. Another topic we did was "Why Do People Suffer?". This topic is a perfect example of how RE is a humanities subject. Suffering is such a huge problem in the world today, and it's not something that sits comfortably when we ask ourselves how can we have luxuries when people are starving? Why do natural disasters happen? What is the human cost of war? This is actually a subject that crosses strongly with lower-school History and Geography.

In December, I wrote to Nick Gibb, Minister of Schools, about this issue in a letter that tried hard to stray from being emotional. In his reply that I received in February, he stated that the EBacc was not to stop students from taking RE, but to have other subjects accompany it. He also made a point of RE being compulsory, thus not needing to be in the EBacc. Well, Science is compulsory - if you take into account the BTEC - yet it's in the EBacc. As for RE being compulsory, I've read of some schools not teaching it, and instead using the time for Citizenship. Nick Gibb is an extremely intelligent man; I've every reason to believe he realises that the EBacc will prevent the taking up of GCSE RE (or, rather, RS!) He seemed to ignore my stressing of how it will prevent students from taking RE at GCSE as opposed to just doing an hour a week, where you gain no qualification from it. This 'compulsory' RE in schools is as different to GCSE RE as the Labour and Conservative party - they're both 'parties' (or in the relevant case, RE), but their content (or in RE's case, status) is completely different. Compulsory RE in schools doesn't suffice alone, and needs to be improved with an enthused RE department, willing to put time into creating a great course, and encouraging students to take RE at GCSE. All of this work RE departments have done in the years prior to now, is being taken away by the creation of the EBacc.

So, RE isn't a humanity on paper, that's it, isn't it? There's no real problem other than official classification. Students will still think that RE is a humanities subject, right? Wrong. In some schools already, students are being told that, for their GCSEs, they are to pick their subject choices according to the EBacc. What does this mean for the students of today? Well, there are complications with option blocks, including students who want to study Biology, Chemistry and Physics not being able to study GCSE RE, and students having to pick History or Geography, and being denied the option of RE. Can you see the problems the EBacc is creating for RE? It's as though RE has no status. People already don't realise the importance of RE, and the Baccalaureate has just done well to make this even worse.

Will my RE career be over before it's even started? Well, if RE teachers and students don't stand up to the Baccalaureate today, that certainly looks how it'll turn out.

Thanks for reading! Take the time to join in 'Tweeting' about the EBacc on twitter.com with the hashtag #EBacc.