Agreed Syllabuses: Their History and Development in England and Wales, 1944–2004

Abstract

To write a history of the development of Agreed Syllabuses of Religious Education in England and Wales seemed, at first sight, to be a simple enough task. But a moment’s reflection was enough to realise that it presented the usual problems and questions of writing any history. Where should one begin? What are the antecedents against which success or otherwise is to be judged? How wide or narrow is the appropriate context within which they are to be explored and what are likely to be the main relevant issues to an international readership scattered around the world? Let me start at London Airport, the point at which most visitors from overseas obtain their first impression of Britain. It is contained within the London Borough of Hounslow, itself an L.E.A. or Local Education Authority, responsible for drawing up and implementing its own Agreed Syllabus of Religious Education. It was in 2001 that I was invited to give the annual lecture to the authority’s Standing Advisory Conference on Religious Education (SACRE). I was greeted by the chairman who introduced himself to me as a secular humanist. He then asked if he might make an announcement before my lecture began. There were some seventy people present, a total mixture of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists and Christians of all varieties. The announcement was that their new Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education had gone through its final stage of approval that same afternoon after three years of discussion and argument. The room exploded in a prolonged outburst of enthusiastic applause and self-congratulation. This should have been national news. Had these groups failed to agree, had they fallen out completely and resorted to acrimony I have no doubt that it would have been headline news in the next day’s papers. What I was witnessing was a process by which diverse, first and second generation immigrants, together with representatives of what would, until recently,