Conference 2000
About The Conference
Whose Responsibility? The balance between local and national in RE was held at Church House, Westminster, on 23 October 2000. It was the fourth national conference sponsored by the St Gabriel's Trust.
In the morning Stephen Orchard (Chair, RE Council of England and Wales) discussed the qualities of RE today and gave some historical background to the subject. Ian Berry (Head of the National Curriculum Division of the DfEE) described the government's position on RE on behalf of the Education Minister, Jacqui Smith MP. From the other side of the political divide, Baroness Blatch provided her views on the present state of RE as the Conservative Spokesman on Education in the House of Lords. Barbara Wintersgill was scheduled to give her standpoint as an HMI with Ofsted, but unfortunately she was ill and could not attend the conference. Instead, John Gay (Culham College Institute) read Mrs Wintersgill's speech with her permission. Afterwards, John Keast (QCA) offered his perspective on the position of RE and suggested a possible way forward. Marian Agombar (NASACRE), Dave Francis (AREIAC) and Linda Rudge (Keswick Hall RE Centre) then voiced their support of the local framework in action.
After lunch the delegates divided into discussion groups to debate the issues brought up by the speakers, and reported their findings to the rest of the conference. Graham Lane (Local Government Association) then spoke of the value of RE, followed by Lord Dearing's summing up and conclusions.
On 14 December 2000 the St Gabriel's Programme held a follow-up seminar to enable organisations to discuss further the issues raised at the conference.
Documents
The full text of the Conference Report
Summary of the Follow-up Seminar, by Colin Alves
These documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF), and can be viewed using programs such
as Adobe Acrobat reader.
Your browser will probably use a suitable reader automatically. If not, you can obtain one
from www.adobe.com
