Culham St Gabriel’s: building FoRB Education through the Religious Education community
Josh Cass, FoRB in Education Case Studies
Culham St Gabriel’s offers an example of how FoRB Education can be developed not as a standalone subject but incorporated into an existing, well-established curriculum area. Rather than seeking to create new space for FoRB, Culham St Gabriel’s has worked to embed FoRB principles within Religious Education (RE), using its standing within the RE community in England to shift practice from the inside.
Background and aims
The primary aim of Culham St Gabriel’s work has been to introduce the concept of FoRB to the RE community as a means of enhancing the teaching, and profile, of RE as a curriculum subject. Central to this has been the development of a clear definition of what constitutes FoRB Education, something that had previously been lacking.
Secondary aims build from this: supporting the development of robust teaching methods consistent with that definition; testing those methods in real classrooms; building teacher confidence to address FoRB directly; and encouraging a step change in how the RE community perceives its own role, so that RE teachers and stakeholders come to see themselves as potential leaders in the promotion and protection of FoRB. Culham St Gabriel’s has also sought to inspire other organisations to test new approaches to FoRB Education and to develop open access resources for teachers.
As an established leader within the RE sector, Culham St Gabriel’s draws on tools familiar to the sector: teacher development resources and training, commissioned research, and thought-leadership publications.
Culham St Gabriel’s primary beneficiaries are both teachers and students, but its method of working is upstream of direct delivery: it shapes the frameworks, language, and resources that other organisations and individual teachers then use in their own classrooms.
Furthermore, Culham St Gabriel’s approach is distinguishable by its reliance on institutional credibility and existing infrastructure rather than the creation of new structures. By working through the RE community, and by translating FoRB into language and tools that fit within statutory RE provision, Culham St Gabriel’s has been able to extend the reach of FoRB Education considerably further than a standalone initiative might have achieved.
Alignment with FoRB Education Principles
Culham St Gabriel’s commissioned research into the nature of FoRB Education, producing recommendations about what such education looks like and how it might be taught. This research underscored the point that FoRB Education, or education aligned with FoRB principles, should create opportunities for children to talk about their own religion or belief and those of others, to talk about freedom, what it means to be free and what restrictions on those freedoms might feel like, and, to learn about Human Rights.
Having established the parameters of its work, Culham St Gabriel’s developed learning framework documents, including learning outcomes for different age groups, which could be used during the creation of lessons and activities to ensure alignment with the principles of FoRB Education.
Culham St Gabriel’s learning frameworks make explicit that FoRB Education is a form of human rights education. Associated resources draw clear connections between the UDHR and subsequent human rights frameworks and instruments, including domestic UK legislation, and frame violations experienced in schools such as antisemitism and Islamophobia through a human rights lens.
As Culham St Gabriel’s work sits within the statutory framework for RE in England, students engaging with Culham St Gabriel’s-influenced RE classrooms are learning about diverse religion and belief identities. Other documents developed by Culham St Gabriel’s, such as their Belonging Toolkit, extend this further by encouraging schools to be alert to, and proactive about, discrimination experienced by pupils or staff in relation to their faith or belief identity, on the assumption that a school in which such experiences persist cannot meaningfully claim to be promoting or protecting FoRB.
Ensuring take up and engagement
This thought-leadership work has had measurable effects. At least one Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education[1] has inserted FoRB into its syllabus. At a national level FoRB is now on the agenda in discussions about possible national programmes of study.
Culham St Gabriel’s research identified the necessity of connecting FoRB Education directly to the RE curriculum. Teachers who participated in that early work were clear that what was needed was the idea of a “FoRB lens” that could be applied to existing units of work.
This sits alongside the broader concept of a “FoRB Flourishing school,” a school in which FoRB is promoted and protected not only through the curriculum but also through professional development and leadership practice. The result has been a suite of documents for senior school leaders and teachers focused on the concept of Belonging, intended to help schools embed FoRB principles across their practice, including in relation to identifying and addressing religiously motivated discrimination or bullying.
Culham St Gabriel’s also established and chairs a UK-based Working Group bringing together organisations working in schools on FoRB and FoRB-adjacent education[2]. This group has fed recommendations into government consultations on cohesion and education.
Culham St Gabriel’s has also commissioned organisations to develop approaches to teaching FoRB: one a youth-leadership model enabling young people to advocate for FoRB, the other a series of lesson plans for secondary school students. Both drew on Culham St Gabriel’s frameworks, reinforcing a sense of an emerging FoRB Education ecosystem within the UK.
As Culham St Gabriel’s occupies a position of influence within the RE community, it has been able to advocate for engagement with FoRB both to that community and back to government. The result has been a gradual but discernible alignment between national frameworks and FoRB-sensitive language.
Engagement with major stakeholders in the RE community has been a critical step. FoRB and its associated vocabulary are now routinely present in the thinking and communications of other major RE organisations, suggesting that the conversation about RE more broadly is shifting to incorporate FoRB. Framing FoRB in relation to questions of cohesion and belonging has been another way to secure engagement from schools, who may find this framing more relevant than a human rights one.
[1] A Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) is a statutory body that advises a local authority in England on matters connected with religious education and collective worship in its schools, including the content of the locally agreed syllabus for RE.
[2] FoRB-adjacent education includes areas such as interfaith dialogue skills, education that counters anti-religious hate, and citizenship education more broadly.
