A)     The Consultant for RE will give a brief outline and feedback on the NASACRE training for new SACRE Members which took place this term in the West Midlands.  Mrs Jutle will also report on her attendance at the training .

B)     Group discussion around the themes of:

§         What’s it like to be a SACRE Member?

§         What do Members need to help everyone feel they can contribute fully?

The Consultant for RE reported upon the National Association of SACRE training for new members of SACRE which had taken place earlier this term in the West Midlands and discussed training issues for existing Members.

The Consultant for RE reported that the government funded NASACRE project to recruit and train new SACRE members was well underway.  The project sought to develop the capacity of SACREs through the training of new members to Committee A.  She reported that in accordance with the suggestion at the December meeting, Mrs G Jutle, being the new Sikh representative, had been offered the opportunity to attend the training.

Mrs G Jutle reported that she had attended the West Midland January training session and had also attended Kingsland Primary School to observe an RE lesson.  She commented that, being a teaching assistant at Whitecross High School, attending Kingsland had given her a useful insight to RE teaching in the primary sector. 

She past on an observation concerning the amount of Collective Worship performed in schools.  Collective Worship was usually performed as part of the school assembly, however, it seemed to her that a great deal of this time was devoted to non Collective Worship activities and school notices. Some schools didn’t have daily assembly.

It was suggested that Collective Worship and the time schools allocate to it should be the subject of a future report.

At this point SACRE undertook a Group discussion on the themes of:

• What is it like to be a SACRE Member? and
• What do Members need to help everyone feel they can contribute fully?

Members had been provided with copies of the handbook for new SACRE Members produced by NASACRE.

The following are the principal comments on the first theme:

• It depended on what was expected of the Member. The role needed to be clearly set out, including any guidance on who the member represented and who they were expected to feed back too.
• Members deemed it a privilege to be on SACRE and to represent their faith.
• SACRE should be responsive to children’s needs.
• While meetings were informative there was a degree of frustration that SACRE was an ‘advisory’ body to the local authority and therefore didn’t have access to its own funding to undertake more significant projects.
• SACRE meetings were a good opportunity to network.

The following are the principal comments on the second theme:

• Clarity about who or what the members represent and who they were expected to report back to.
• Information about the extent of the powers of SACRE.
• Clarification on the resources of SACRE.
• Further opportunities to exchange information.
• Training for members and the opportunity to improve networking through social events/activities.

The point was made that children are the future and therefore there was a need to ensure that the spiritual element, including the ethos to care for other people, was included in their education.

RESOLVED: that the Chairman discuss with the SACRE Lead Officer and the Clerk possible ways to further improve the training and flow of information to Members.