Agenda item

INTER-FAITH COMPETITION

Minutes:

The SACRE RE Adviser informed Members that the schools’ calendar competition had been held and the final design of the calendar had been circulated. A primary RE network meeting would be taking place the following day, at which the winners would be revealed, and certificates would be sent on to the schools. As agreed previously, the calendar would not be printed, but it would be uploaded to the Bromley Education Matters website.

 

The SACRE RE Adviser asked Members if they would like the calendar competition to take place again the following year. A teacher representative said the calendar was a lovely idea but suggested adding in a video feature with links to the children celebrating their beliefs at home on various dates. This could be connected with the units of work and would bring it to life and make it more real. The SACRE RE Adviser agreed that this was a good idea and suggested that a starting point could be to invite the winners of this years’ competition to make a short video describing what they had drawn and why. The teacher representative said she felt it would be useful to have this as an open invitation for anyone who wanted to create a video, and consent given to share them, as it would help to build a bank of resources. The SACRE RE Adviser said that she had organised a “video pen pal” event in another borough, for which pupils had a focused topic or question and created a short video or presentation to share with the linked school. It was proposed that the inter-faith competition remain for the next academic year, and consideration could then be given to this the following year.

 

Another teacher representative stated that she really liked the calendar and found it very useful to have the dates of celebrations listed. The idea of producing a calendar had initially be agreed to help promote Religious Education across the schools in Bromley and felt that this needed to be progressed in some way. It was suggested that with COVID-19 restrictions being lifted thought could be given in the future to events allowing pupils to display their RE projects. The SACRE RE Adviser considered that the pen pal idea could be replicated in future years by schools visiting each other, rather than virtually.

 

A SACRE Member suggested that the calendar artwork could be made into an interactive PDF, allowing a link on the picture to be clicked on to take the viewer to another page of content as to why the picture was drawn and the meaning behind it. It was also considered that work undertaken by schools relating to particular events and celebrations could be collected for use the following year. The SACRE RE Adviser agreed that this was a lovely idea however there were several issues that would need to be taken into account, including the work being quality assured and having the relevant GDPR permissions. The SACRE RE Adviser said that she was working on some unit outlines with a group of primary teachers and schools would be encouraged to share their work within the network.