ABSTRACT
In a published retrospective review of religious education policy, Barbara Wintersgill and Ian Brine, both former Her Majesty’s Inspectors of religious education nationally, claimed that 1993–2010 was a ‘golden age for RE’, characterised by a partnership between local and national bodies. This chapter aims to take a longer, more penetrating view and attempts to identify the weaknesses in religious education and ascertain something of their cause and location. It deals with a short review of the weaknesses identified by those who hold to the golden age/fall interpretation. In 2013 the Religious Education Council of England and Wales conducted ‘A Review of Religious Education in England’, in part to complement the new Lib-Dem, Conservative government’s review of the national curriculum for schools in England, undertaken by the Department for Education from January 2011 to July 2013.
