SACRE Monitoring Visits to Schools

The purpose of this report is to update the members of York SACRE on the first school monitoring visit which took place in February 2023.

The purpose of the first visit was to test out the format of the visits to inform the development of a programme of half-termly visits during the academic year 2023-24.

The visit to a maintained primary school was conducted by three members of SACRE, supported by the LA adviser to SACRE. The SACRE members were representing groups A and D.

Key learning points from the visit

· The structure of the visit worked well, the headteacher and subject leader welcomed the visit;

· Specific questions to support SACRE members with gathering pupil voice would be helpful for future visits;

· The headteacher provided feedback on continuing professional development for teachers. The headteacher felt that this works best if it can be delivered in school as this would maximise the number of staff who could be involved;

· The subject leader felt that support was needed for managing mixed age group teaching of the R.E. curriculum to ensure appropriate challenge and progression;

· The subject leader felt that when the Locally Agreed Syllabus is reviewed it would be helpful to look at how subject specific vocabulary can be made more prominent in the planning (specifically to support non-subject specialists). He felt it would also be useful to have a phonetic dictionary of subject specific vocabulary to support teachers with accurate pronunciation.

Specific strengths observed during this visit were:

· The school closely follows the Locally Agreed Syllabus and this has underpinned the development of the school’s R.E. curriculum which has linked the long term plan to the R.E. Today unit plans. Progression across the key stages from early years to KS2 has been mapped;

· The impact of the R.E. curriculum is being closely monitored by the subject leader, who uses PPA time and leadership time to complete monitoring activities e.g. pupil voice and lesson drop -ins. This informs termly monitoring reports and subject self-evaluation. During this visit SACRE members were provided with examples of the monitoring activity that takes place;

· There is a comprehensive whole school policy statement for R.E. and the provision across Key Stages follows the recommended national curriculum teaching hours for R.E.;

· There is an annual programme of faith visitors and visits to local places of worship which enriches the delivery of the subject and supports collective worship. The Parent Teacher Association are supporting travel costs for school visits. The programme of faith visitors and out of school visits was disrupted by the covid pandemic but has been re-introduced;

· Two members of SACRE spoke to a small group of children during this visit and it was clear that the children enjoy R.E. and recognised it as a subject. They were able to describe what they had been learning and were able to recognise and describe a font (without using the word font). It was clear that they understood the purpose of a font, how and why it was used.

· There is a clear assessment framework in place and the subject leader was able to share examples of progress data from across the different key stages and the way he is using analysis of performance to review and refine the curriculum.

Following the success of this initial visit a programme of visits will now be put in place.

Maxine Squire

June 2023

Annex A: School Visit monitoring proforma