Designing the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education and promoting inter-faith relations, social cohesion and solidarity in Birmingham
Submitting Institution
University of BirminghamUnit of Assessment
Theology and Religious StudiesSummary Impact Type
CulturalResearch Subject Area(s)
Language, Communication and Culture: Literary Studies
Philosophy and Religious Studies: Philosophy, Religion and Religious Studies
Summary of the impact
Enshrining 24 moral and spiritual dispositions, the 2007
Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for
Religious Education, the outcome of years of Marius Felderhof's research
into educational
principles, marks a dramatic departure from previous RE syllabuses.
It has been officially
adopted by Birmingham City Council, welcomed by civic leaders, endorsed by
Birmingham faith
leaders, and implemented in nearly 400 Birmingham schools. In
addition, it has stimulated
debate on RE provision nationally and internationally, and has been the
subject of studies and
conference debates in the UK and elsewhere. Shifting the focus of RE
teaching from imparting
information to moral and spiritual formation, it is acknowledged as
introducing the most radical
changes to RE in decades.
Underpinning research
Dr Marius Felderhof, Senior Lecturer in Philosophical and Systematic
Theology, specialises in
religious education and its underlying theological and philosophical
principles. In the wake of
government statutes in the 1990s that reconfirmed the requirements of the
1944 Education Act, he
developed an interest in the practical and theoretical issues raised by
the obligation on maintained
schools to provide religious education and collective worship. His
reflections on these issues
through the early 2000s are documented by a selection of his articles
listed below, in particular his
contribution to Inspiring Faith in Schools (2007), of which he was
co-editor (the outcome of a series
of colloquia he helped to organise in order to pursue further his vision
of religious education). The
theological position that underpins his work is summed up in his book Revisiting
Christianity,
theological reflections (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011).
Felderhof's main principle is that in their religious education young
people should be approached
as whole persons through their experience. Educating them about
religion should provide them
with guidelines for life, for which the profoundest insights of the great
religions can be tapped. The
task of religious education is not simply to impart facts, but to help
young people to recognise the
spiritual and moral dimensions of life and to make them their own.
In advancing this approach,
he challenges many assumptions about RE that are built into current UK
curriculums. For him the
primary focus should be on educating young people in what it is to be
religious and moral,
with their development as whole individuals uppermost in mind, rather than
on learning the
detached intellectual study of religion - this comes later. So, he has
taken the four cardinal virtues
and three theological virtues of classical Christian theology and related
them to equivalents in other
religious traditions. On the basis of this he has developed 24 moral
and spiritual dispositions.
Felderhof has spoken about these 24 dispositions at specialist
conferences and has written articles
on them for academic journals from the early 2000s onwards. They lie at
the heart of the
Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education, published in
2007. This Syllabus, which
was drafted by him, is the main outcome of the body of research that
underpins this case for
impact.
Since the Syllabus was officially adopted and implemented, Felderhof has
continued to reflect and
publish on the implications of the principles about religious education he
advocates. He has
particularly focused on the place of secular humanism and atheism in the
curriculum, and on the
cognitive, affective and conative dimensions of this method of education.
References to the research
R1) `On Understanding Worship in School. Part One: on schooling and
education', Journal of
Beliefs and Values 20 (1999) 219-30 [DOI:
10.1080/1361767990200207].
R2) `On Understanding Worship in School. Part Two: on worship and
educating', Journal of Beliefs
and Values 21 (2000) 17-26 [DOI: 10.1080/13617670050002291].
R3) `The New National Framework for RE in England and Wales: a critique',
Journal of Beliefs and
Values 25 (2004) 241-8 [DOI: 10.1080/1361767042000251645].
R4) `R.E.: Religions, equality and curriculum time', Journal of
Beliefs and Values 26 (2005) 201-14
[DOI: 10.1080/13617670500164965].
R5) `Religionsunterricht in Grossbritannien' [`RE in England and Wales'],
in Religionen in der
Schule, Bildung in Deutschland und Europa vor neuen Herausforderungen,
Bad Homburg v. d.
Hohe: Herbert Quandt Stiftung, 2007, 171-87 [available from HEI on
request].
R6) Marius Felderhof, David Torevell and Penny Thompson (eds), Inspiring
faith in schools,
Farnham: Ashgate, 2007 [available from HEI on request].
Details of the impact
Felderhof has been a member of Birmingham's Standing Advisory Council on
Religious Education
(SACRE) since 1982. In consideration of his distinctive contributions to
the debate about RE as
outlined above, in 2005 he was invited to draft the new Agreed
Syllabus for Religious Education
for Birmingham City Council, the largest education authority in the
country. The work on this
involved producing a text on religious education in schools from early
years to secondary level (see
source 1 below), steering it through a scrutiny committee and sessions of
the Birmingham Agreed
Syllabus Conference, consulting regularly with teachers and educators
across the city, and briefing
the Birmingham Faith Leaders' Group. Felderhof was instrumental in
ensuring that everyone
affected by the syllabus, including members of nine different faith groups
and different departments
of the City Council, accepted and associated themselves with it.
This intensive process resulted in the adoption of the syllabus
by Birmingham City Council in
June 2007 (source 2), and its implementation throughout the Birmingham
Education Authority
area. By 2012 an impressive 385 primary and secondary schools were
teaching it, together with
a number of early years education providers. In addition it was adopted
by Birmingham Diocese
for use in its church schools, and also by Nishkam primary, a Sikh
school in Handsworth, where it
is at the heart of the educational philosophy (source 3). This means that
since the syllabus was
introduced it has reached literally thousands of young people in the
Birmingham area, meaning
that Felderhof's distinctive insights into the nature of RE, enshrined in
the Agreed Syllabus with the
24 dispositions prominently included, have wide and deep effects on many
young and developing
lives. This is the only RE Syllabus constructed along these lines
currently available in the
UK.
Faith leaders in Birmingham readily endorsed the syllabus and gave
it their full support, as was
vividly demonstrated when the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, David
Urquhart, wrote to
government ministers in 2009 to commend it in place of the government's
draft guidance on the
Non-Statutory National Framework for Religious Education, 2004 (source 4).
In response, Jill
Loosely, Deputy Director of the Curriculum Policy Division in the
Department for Education, visited
Birmingham in September 2011 to find out more, while Nick Gibb MP,
Minister of State for
Schools, planned to come on 2 October 2012 (a cabinet reshuffle prevented
this).
The City Council gave substantial backing to the Syllabus through
an on-going budget for its
implementation to SACRE. First allocated from 2011, this budget funds a
website for teachers
which sets out the rationale and aims of the syllabus, and provides
schemes of work, lesson plans,
films of good classroom practice, and other resources (sources 5 and 6).
The Syllabus has generated widespread interest and debate outside
Birmingham, both in the UK
and abroad. Birmingham SACRE has received enquiries about it from
Bristol, London, Coventry
and Manchester, while Felderhof has given invited talks on it at
conferences for religious
leaders, academics and educators in Israel (June 2010) and the USA (April
2011), to the
government of the Sudan (April 2011), at the Museum of World Religions in
Taiwan (November
2011), at the International Symposium on Religion, Spirituality and
Education for Human
Flourishing in Marrakesh (March 2012, co-convened by the Guerrand-Hermes
Foundation for
Peace and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations), and a keynote
address to an audience of
researchers and educators at the Westhill Trust seminar on Spirituality
and RE in Leeds,
November 2011. He was also invited to join Birmingham political and
spiritual leaders in their
representations on RE at the Department for Education. In 2009 he
was part of a delegation to
consult a London-based Queen's Counsel on the legality of elements in the
government's draft
Guidance for RE (2009), in particular the status of the Non-Statutory
National Framework for RE
(2004). As a result, the final Guidance issued by the government in 2010
was significantly changed
from its draft form, acknowledging the right of local authorities to
continue to issue their own
syllabus and to make the major religious traditions the basis of their
contents.
Evaluation of the impact of the Syllabus has begun. In preparation
for a full-scale study, in 2012
a pilot study was made by Penny Jennings to compare pupils' responses with
many similar
questions asked in a survey done some years ago in Cornwall. One
observation was: `Although
aware that comparisons cannot be made without the relevant statistical
analyses and unless
samples are comparable in size and composition, [we] noticed that the
responses to some sections
of the Birmingham pilot study differed greatly from those in the earlier
Cornwall survey. For
example, Birmingham's Year 9 pupil responses to items examining attitudes
to "spiritual"
experiences appeared to be predominantly positive, whereas Cornwall's Year
9 and 10 pupil
responses in this section were predominantly negative.' (source 7)
Praise for the Syllabus has been consistent. As early as 2008,
Tony Howell, then Director of
Children's Services for Birmingham, commented: `It is probably one of
the most exciting
curriculum developments we have seen over the last few years'
(source 8), and in 2011
Professor Trevor Cooling, Director of the National Institute for Christian
Education Research at
Canterbury Christ Church University, wrote: `If RE went down this road it
would be the most
radical change since the shift stimulated by Ninian Smart's work'
(source 9). Its influence on
faith cooperation in Birmingham is summed up in the 2011 report of
Councillor Les Lawrence,
Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families, to the City
Council: `The experience of
delivering the 2007 Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education ...
has brought the
faiths together in a common purpose and has created mutual support
among the religious
communities' (7 February, 2012).
Most significant of all, teachers themselves have commented on
how their students approach RE
in a new way. Bethan Ruth, Frankley School, says: `Historically it was
just about learning facts.
Now it's about what they get out of it and what the benefits are
and if any of those benefits could
be applied within their own lives. So it's a lot more about learning from
religion as a result of
looking at how faith has an impact in a believer's life. I very rarely get
them asking why they are
learning this. It's more about "this is really interesting and I
want to learn more" and "this is my
view on it. What motivates someone to come from that view on this?"'
(source 10). In addition,
other educational practitioners have begun to see the potential of
the syllabus. In September
2013, Ian Jones, the head of St Peter's Saltley Trust, Birmingham, raised
the possibility of applying
it for FE students, explaining: `If it's true that employers as often
value good character as specific
skills or knowledge, some of those fundamental dispositions (such as being
accountable and living
with integrity, being open, honest and truthful, being merciful and
forgiving) will surely be key to
that. Indeed, recently I showed the 'Faith makes a Difference' site to a
new FE college chaplain
who was looking for ideas and resources, and he got quite excited about
how relevant the
dispositions could be within his context' (source 11).
These high commendations were endorsed in August 2011, when an issue
of the Journal of
Beliefs and Values was dedicated to Felderhof and his
innovative work (source 12), showing
that his original insights into the nature and function of RE, expressed
in the 24 dispositions, have
not only reached great numbers of school children in the West Midlands,
but have also influenced
thinking at high levels among educationalists and practitioners. The
impact of his research is
clearly both pervasive and profound and it continues to spread.
Sources to corroborate the impact
[1] The Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education
(2007),
http://www.faithmakesadifference.co.uk/landing#node-92.
[2] http://www.birminghampost.net/news/west-midlands-news/2007/06/25/religion-key-to-making-pupils-model-citizens-65233-19353009/ (article in The
Birmingham Post about the
official adoption of the syllabus by the City Council).
[3] Factual statement provided Sikh businessman in Birmingham, detailing
the adoption of the
dispositions by Nishkam primary school, with the intention to adopt it
more widely.
[4] The Bishop of Birmingham's communication to government ministers,
2009 (available on
request).
[5] www.faithmakesadifference.co.uk.
[6] The Bishop of Birmingham's press release for the launch of the new
website in 2012
(http://www.birmingham.anglican.org/content/content_yourchurch_news_story.asp?id=873).
[7] Appendix to P. Jennings and M. Felderhof (eds), Teaching Virtue,
Bloomsbury, forthcoming.
[8] DVD, `Religious Education in Birmingham', Birmingham City Council,
2008 (available on
request).
[9] Factual statement provided by Director of the National Institute for
Christian Education
Research at Canterbury Christ Church University.
[10] http://www.faithmakesadifference.co.uk/landing#node-94.
[11] Factual statement provided by head of St Peter's Saltley Trust,
Birmingham.
[12] Journal of Beliefs and Values 32/2 (August 2011), a special
issue dedicated to Felderhof,
with a tribute by Birmingham Councillors Alan Rudge and Les Lawrence
(http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjbv20?open=32#vol_32).