(a)

Astra Parkin (Baptist Church representative);

(b)

Gary Futcher, head of All Saints Academy Plymouth, (PASH representative).

Members were advised that –

(c)

Mirella Paganuzzi is the new Special Schools representative;

(d)

a new Roman Catholic representative was still being sought.  A possible candidate, Dr David Lundie (Associate Professor in Education at Marjon) had yet to be approached.

(a)

the SACRE Annual Report would be available at the end of January 2017, and would be circulated to members and sent to NASACRE;

(b)

Katie Freeman continued to successfully lead the RE Hub;

(c)

three teacher training days had been held at PIETY in February;

(d)

all Plymouth schools had received a number of publications to assist with the teaching of Islam and British Values in Religious Education;

(e)

Solly Irving (a Holocaust survivor) had visited Plymouth in January 2016 for Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD);

(f)

Jonathan Marshall and MarkAndrew Dearden had attended the South West SACRE Conference and had met the new CEO of the RE Council;

(g)

two local schools had received grants from SACRE to assist with the development of the new RE syllabus in their schools;

(h)

13 of the 17 secondary schools in Plymouth had entered a total of 659 pupils for GCSE RE;

(i)

Coombe Dean School, Eggbuckland Community College, Sir John Hunt Community Sports College and UTC Plymouth did not enter any pupils for GCSE RE, and members were advised that there could be a number of reasons for this;

(j)

74% of pupils attained A*-C (slightly above the national average of 72%);

(k)

the two Roman Catholic schools enter all of their pupils for GCSE RS;

(l)

10 schools had entered a total of 93 pupils for A Level RE – with 100% attaining A*-E;

(m)

10 schools had entered a total of 68 pupils for AS Level RE – with 90% attaining A*-C.

(a)

over 50 Plymouth schools had received Prevent training as part of their Safeguarding training.  Training was a big pressure for a number of schools due to the large number of staff that needed to be trained.  For this reason the possibility of Prevent twilight training had been investigated;

(b)

it was necessary for schools to afford Prevent training the same importance as Safeguarding training;

(c)

it was important that young people-

·         were empowered to have a voice;

·         understood the consequences of their actions;

·         can participate in the curriculum;

·         can challenge prejudices;

·         develop their thinking skills;

·         think for themselves;

·         understand that not everything they hear or see is correct;

(d)

some of the Prevent training had involved members of PIETY (at their request);

(e)

primary school children used a workbook to work through the Prevent agenda (Detective Dave is the character).  This training had proved to be very popular and changed frequently;

(f)

children who were thought to be at risk of extremism could be referred to the ‘Channel Panel’ (Channel is a programme which focuses on providing support at an early stage to people who are identified as being vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism.  The programme uses a multi-agency approach to protect vulnerable people by:

• identifying individuals at risk
• assessing the nature and extent of that risk
• developing the most appropriate support plan for the individuals concerned)

Any child who refused to participate in this programme and was thought to be at risk was notified to the police.  The programme focused on three categories – the far right, ISIS related issues and anything else (homophobia, animal rights, feminist rights);

The number of referrals from schools had increased as more people became aware of the Prevent agenda; however it was not possible to advise members of the number of Plymouth children referred;

(g)

Plymouth City Council were hosting a Prevent Conference on Tuesday 15 November – school staff and other agencies were welcome to attend.

(a)

the conference had been well attended by primary, secondary and student teachers;

(b)

the keynote addresses were provided by Helen Matter (Schools' Adviser, Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich) and Grace Davie (Professor emeritus of Sociology at the University of Exeter, and Chair of the St Luke's College Foundation);

(c)

workshops took place on subject leadership, new projects, developments in ‘assessment without levels’ and teachers’ subject knowledge;

(d)

two new areas were now being funded, and Katie had been involved in training their RE Hub leaders;

(e)

funding was available for another LTLRE Annual Conference, however the situation surrounding the future funding of LTLRE was still unknown;

(f)

the next RE Hub meeting would be held at 4 pm on Thursday 1 December at St Matthew’s Primary and Nursery Academy, and all SACRE members were invited to attend.

(g)

he sent an annual update to all Plymouth schools to remind them how SACRE supports RE and what it can fund;

(h)

two Plymouth schools had received grants of £250 to support the development of RE in their schools.  No applications for this grant had been received so far this year and it was possible that SACRE could award eight of these grants each year;

(i)

the SACRE page on the ‘School Room’ page of the Plymouth City Council website contained links to key RE websites;

(j)

plans were underway to hold three teaching sessions on ‘Teaching Judaism’ at Plymouth Synagogue in February 2017;

(k)

collective worship was an important issue, and a meeting on this subject would be held at Hyde Park School on Monday 28 November at 4.05 pm;

(l)

the South West SACRE Conference would be held on Monday 6 March 2017 at Dillington in Somerset, and funding was available for 2 members of SACRE to attend.