ABSTRACT
There is a very real danger that in identifying the contribution which Religious Education can make to whole school initiatives that Religious Education loses its focus as a discrete subject in the school curriculum. This was certainly true in the 1970s when Religious Education, like general studies and social studies, became ‘issues based’, engulfed in the morality of sex, marriage, violence and war arguments, frequently without the inclusion of a religious perspective. There are those who suggest that Religious Education is a natural vehicle for delivering personal, social and health education and, more recently, citizenship education. Literacy issues became the focus of the National Literacy Project (DfEE 1996) and the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE 1997) for primary schools and, more recently, the focus of the Key Stage 3: National Strategy: Language at Work in Lessons (DfEE/QCA 2001). The government’s focus upon improving literacy and numeracy has required teachers to address the contribution made by their subject to pupils’ literacy, and, in turn, the contribution made by literacy to pupils’ learning within the subject area. Government initiatives for including citizenship education within the curriculum have imposed a need for schools to consider where the requirements might be incorporated within the subject areas and where they should be addressed separately. Running parallel to these developments there has been an increasing demand that ICT should play a significant role in the curriculum, while schools have long been aware of the need to make provision for pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development There are undoubtedly strong links between Religious Education and each of the above aspects, but its contribution to whole school initiatives must be based on an integral relationship rather than any ad hoc or tenuous linkage and, equally important, in time firm boundaries between each of the disciplines must be imposed.
