Does religious education work?: James Conroy

Issued: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 15:50:00 BST

A three-year project examining the aims, practices and effects of religious education in schools has recently been completed. The £365,326 study, jointly funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the Economic & Social Research Council, looked at religious education in the very different contexts of England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland and carried out a detailed analysis of pupils’ experience of religious education as a shaping influence in secondary schools across the UK.

Glasgow Professor of Religious & Philosophical Education James Conroy was the principal investigator: ‘This study has thrown up a substantial range of questions about the provision of religious education across Britain. Even in schools where it is valued, too often it is under-resourced and required to do too much with too little. As a result, it often loses focus. At its best, it is academically rigorous and intellectually stimulating.’

The key findings of the project were:

• The breadth of social and educational demands placed on the subject leads to a conflict between religious education as an academic subject and as a subject aimed at students’ social and personal development. This can lead to students being unclear about the purpose and focus of the subject.
• Religious education has become very popular among students, with high rates of examination success – it also appears, however, that the drive to achieve examination success tends to distort the religious and educational aims and outcomes of the subject.
• The quality of resources and their use in the later stages of compulsory religious education are often poor and the sometimes too comfortable relationship between examination boards and textbook authors should be subject to more intense scrutiny.
• Some of the most dynamic religious education is to be found in state and church schools serving strongly religious (often migrant) communities, especially where religious education is explicitly designed to help students understand their place in a complex multi-cultural and multi-religious society.
• All of these findings must be understood in the context of resource concerns in a political environment where religious education faces a potential downgrading in favour of a more limited curriculum.