Why Conversations are so important for SACRE’s

I work for Hampshire County Council as their RE Inspector/Adviser and am also the Professional RE adviser for the Hampshire SACRE and the Isle of Wight SACRE. Part of my role involves also having close links with the Southampton and Portsmouth SACRE’s in our local area. In addition to this SACRE work, I am also the RE Hubs leader for the South East. The RE Hubs aim is to be a one stop shop for teachers and professionals involved in RE/RVE and R&W which puts people in contact with high quality resources and support in their local area and other geographical areas too.

One of the key highlights of my Hubs work has been to work with Anne Andrews and Bill Moore from the NASACRE executive over the last year to deliver the bi annual ‘In conversation with NASACRE’ events for the South East area. I have seen first-hand how the conversations have grown among our SACRE’s and the range of ideas that have developed between SACRE Chairs, Vice Chairs, Advisers and LA Officers in a way that is unique and welcomed by us all. In the years before this initiative, I ran a bi annual South East SACRE Hubs meeting for SACRE leaders and regularly saw around 7-8 SACRE’s come together to discuss areas of common interest and share ideas. Now, since the partnership between NASACRE and RE Hubs, this idea has been developed and improved with a far greater reach among local SACRE’s. When we first began the conversations in 2023, we began with five SACRE’s attending our first conversation. In 2024, this number grew to twelve SACRE’s and we predict that it will rise again in 2025. Without such a partnership, such an event would have been very difficult to organise and it has been fabulous to see such a variety of leaders from our SE SACRE’s coming together to share rich discussions that all of us are interested in.

This year, our next meeting is in March 2025 and we have firm plans for an Autumn meeting and our next Spring meeting in 2026. There are always many areas to discuss together – past topics include the usefulness of NASACRE training in our SACRE’s and its benefits to members, SACRE plans for training teachers, recruiting new members and top tips for us all shared from projects that have gone well in our own local areas. We plan to extend this range of conversations by considering the helpfulness of different types of data in our own SACRE’s.

If you are a Chair, Vice Chair, Adviser or LA officer, please get in touch with your local RE Hubs leader or NASACRE executive and ask to come along – the conversations are not only useful for us all, but inspiring and helpful too. In this year of the English curriculum review, Ofsted suggested changes to their framework and devolution proposals that face some geographical areas, we will certainly not run out of conversation topics!

 

Justine Ball - South East RE Hubs Lead