Sarah Lane Cawte, Education Officer
On 25 June, I joined the Department for Education’s termly Faith School Providers Group meeting. This provides a good opportunity to hear about new policy developments, direct from officials.
The Faith and Belief Collective is a small interfaith group of people with an interest and expertise in policy issues relating to faith and belief. At the last meeting, on 27 June, I was able to talk about current issues in education with key people from a wide range of faith and belief backgrounds, with the aim of working towards some publicly available resources.
I chaired the termly meeting of Essex SACRE on 30 June. SACREs are really important bodies for supporting RE in local authority schools – and often in other types of school too. We are grateful for the involvement of many free church volunteers in their local SACREs.
The RE Council Board met on 2 July, and I chaired the meeting. The Board discussed the policy work, resourcing and wider engagement of the Council.
On 3 July, I attended the Culham St Gabriel’s Trust’s Partnership Meeting. The Free Churches Group is grateful to receive a grant from CStG, which pays for some of the time I spend in my role as Chair of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales. The meeting was an opportunity for recipients of grants to meet with trustees and discuss the direction of CStG, as well as to share news of their own work and build links across projects and organisations.