CIP Programme Manager Dr Iona Hine interviews Bushra Nasir CBE, a pioneering educator and advocate for religious education. They discuss the importance of religious education in the UK, particularly amid contemporary societal challenges such as politicized differences and misinformation. Bushra Nasir emphasizes the role of schools in fostering understanding, tolerance, and respect among young people, referring to specific examples of good practice from her time as head of Plashet girls’ school and an academy CO—and advocating for the importance of specialist teachers and an equitable place for RE. In context of the national curriculum review, discussion highlights the opportunity to address global and multicultural issues, and the essential skills of debate and critical thinking RE can develop.

Listeners are encouraged to reflect on the role of education in their communities and consider how embracing diverse faith perspectives can contribute to a more cohesive and understanding world.

00:00 About the series: RE Future & Interfaith Futures

01:22 Introducing Bushra Nasir CBE

03:03 The Role of Religious Education in Contemporary Society

05:15 Building Capacities Through Religious Education

08:06 Policy Makers and Religious Education

12:56 Values in Religious Education

16:56 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Hello, I'm Dr. Iona Hine, and I'm Programme Manager for the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, a research and engagement centre based in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. This interview is produced in partnership with the Faith and Belief Forum as part of UK Interfaith Week 2024.

Together, we aim to stimulate fresh conversations about religious education, about policy, and how those interact with the UK's faith and belief landscape. This interview is also in a series on the theme of interfaith futures, with further conversations due to feature a mix of established and emergent voices, while exploring questions about faith and belief in research, in policy, and in practice.

Since the topic here today is religious education, I might sensibly complete my introduction by mentioning that alongside my programme management credentials, I spent a spell as an RE professional, training at Roehampton University in the Mid Aughts and teaching in South Yorkshire before embarking on my PhD.

For five years, she worked as part time CEO of the Drapers Multi Academy Trust, where she led five schools on their journey to become good. She served as a coach for the National College for School Leadership BME Headteacher Internship Programme, and was also chair of the Education Committee of the Migration Museum Project.

Bushra currently serves on the Education Advisory Panel for the King's Trust. overseeing school programs including Achieve, Mosaic and Enterprise Challenge. Bushra is a Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Greater London and Chair of the Faith Council, and importantly for our conversation today, she is a member of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales.

Welcome, Bushra.

Thank you so much for that lovely introduction, Iona.

So I want to kick us off with a question about the contemporary moment. How can, and or indeed should, thinking about religious education respond to our contemporary moment? A moment marked by politicised difference, inflammatory rhetoric, leading to violence.

What is the potential for religious education to respond to this moment?

Okay, I mean, the race riots in particular witnessed this summer were really a wake up call for all of us. As a young person who grew up in the 70s and 80s, I was used to that, seeing that hatred on the streets, the sort of slogans in graffiti about different minority groups and so on, and I thought we'd lived through that, and I thought our children and grandchildren wouldn't actually face those same sort of issues and sadly that happened this summer.

And it actually, it shows a lack of knowledge of faiths, especially Islam, the spreading of misinformation through social media, and how our society is very fractured. I was particularly concerned, having been in education for so long, and having a love of young people, was the number of young school children who were involved in the riots, along with their parents, and the number of arrests for those that had happened.

So really, I believe schools have a very important role. to play in trying to bridge, communities, bring, bridge, children's understanding of what is happening in society in order to give them a safe space to be able to discuss faith issues and, sometimes agreeing to disagree. in a way that is actually a learning for the young people.

So I think it has highlighted how important for me actually schools are and RE in particular is in trying to increase understanding and tolerance and respect of young people.

Thank you. I guess this next question connects very much to that. And I want to ask, what does religious education offer in terms of building capacities to respond to future similar challenges?

So thinking of the riots and of the violence and so forth. Yeah, what's the capacity here?

I think young people knowing about their own faith. is very important. They can learn that from, obviously, their own families, they, their own places of worship, and within their own communities.

However, schools like Plashet used to have, for example, assemblies that were available, three times a week, which were actually separate acts of worship. We actually sought a determination. We had separate Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Christian assemblies led by faith leaders and actually multi faith assemblies as well.

And it was optional for children to attend whichever assembly they wanted to go to. And there was no rule that if you're a Muslim, you only had to go to the Muslim assembly. And it was very funny sometimes because the assemblies were in different locations, sometimes the child would go to an assembly because it was near the next lesson.

But, in fact, in our Ofsted report, that was picked up as an example of good practice because it gave children a very good understanding of their own faith. But as a school, we also did things together to celebrate Diwali and Christmas and Eid and Ramzan. So you brought children together as well.

So understanding their own faith and other faiths is very important and that builds the capacity for understanding and tolerance and actually respect which I think is really crucial within schools and within society. And, as I said before, having the opportunity to discuss and disagree sometimes agreeably, is something that we as teachers can help young people to do. And it's a very important skill for life, really, rather than just in school. They'll come through all sorts of things in life that actually they may disagree with somebody, but you can sometimes agree to disagree, which is a very important skill.

And I believe actually knowledge is power. If children do not have the knowledge, how can they discuss the big issues? Like religion, like anti Semitism, like Islamophobia, stereotypes. So these are things that I think, RE can actually instill in children. Schools have lots of opportunities, for example, in PSHE, for example, through assemblies, and actually the culture of a school to really build that.

But RE as part of the curriculum has got a great leverage on these sort of skills that can be developed in young people.

Okay, so then if we think about people who might need to learn about religious education or may be in the position to be making important decisions about education more widely, so I'm thinking of policy makers, and I kind of have two questions here that we'll put together.

What do policy makers need to know about religious education to inform their decision making? And also if there's something policy makers ought to take away from religious education, perhaps something religious education is doing particularly well, to inform decision making that can lead to more cohesive futures?

I mean, I'm sure, Iona, you're aware, and other people may be aware, there's a big review going on at the moment of the National Curriculum, okay. It's time to take stock of where we are as a society, and where Britain is in a multicultural, multi global world, and so on, to review what we've done. What is being taught in our schools through the national curriculum and obviously academies, can come out of that national curriculum as well.

However, a lot of academies like Drapers Academy, we actually follow the national curriculum, and tweaked it in certain ways to fit in our needs and so on. So I think this is a golden opportunity actually for RE, the RE curriculum to be looked at in more detail to make it up to date, being able to tackle some of these issues in Britain, but also happening across the world, and give opportunities for young people to learn a little bit more and be updated to meet the needs of the diverse background of the religions in Britain and across the world, because we're global now and young people from here will be in their lifetime traveling and people from abroad will be coming here. So we are all tied together. So I do think it's a very important time for us to review what the RE curriculum actually contains. And it's not just the content, but it's actually the skills that you're developing for young people, the ability to debate, the ability to listen, to be able to put your views forward in a very clear and concise way, to be able to produce arguments.

Those are very important skills, not just in RE, but in other things. But having that knowledge of religious faith gives you a grounding from which to start that discussion. And one of the things I've known, obviously, as a head teacher and a CO, actually the percentage of schools offering RE within the curriculum has declined over the years as an entitlement. And, particularly in academies, I've got to say.

And RE being taught by specialists has also declined.

One of the successes of RE teaching at Plashet actually was we had teachers who were trained RE teachers. RE was their first subject and they were very passionate about it. And sadly in a few schools I've seen, RE is the sort of fill-in subjects for people who don't have, you know, enough maths lessons to teach.

So they're given a couple of lessons of RE and at the end, maybe leadership team will do a couple of lessons of RE to fill in the timetable.

I think the thing of RE being taught by specialists and of RE having that same status as the core subjects, I think will actually help to give that strength to the subject, but also know that it has much wider implications than just the GCSE because it's changing people's mindset and getting people to look at the world from a very different angle and a wider angle to help produce actually active citizens, citizens who will question the status quo, will question stereotypes, will question, racism and anti- faith feelings that there are around in the world. And be able to handle a lot of the stuff on social media that actually is the bread and butter of a lot of our children, actually, sadly. Which is very different from our time.

Handling misinformation, for example, if the children have knowledge, they can handle that better than if they are in a sort of a vacuum around that. So, it is, I think, a very important opportunity to look what is taught in schools and with the diversification within education of maintained schools and academies and multi academy trusts and so on. I think we need to review how education is going and go back to entitlement actually for all children from 5 to 16 and 5 to 18 to have that good RE world faith view.

Thank you. So, my final question then and this one— I think I'll say up front, so I'm part of the Faith & Belief Policy Collective, which has been brought together over the past year or so. So I'm a signatory to a letter that was published in June of this year, 2024, addressed to the incoming government, pre election.

The letter outlines five shared values that contribute to a more holistic society. And those are compassion, integrity, stewardship, community, and then peace and reconciliation. So I'm curious, do any of those values resonate with your visions of religious education and its future? And if so, in what ways?

Okay, in my time as an educator, I've seen so many vision statements and mission statements of schools and multi academy trust. And I drafted up my own vision statement with my leadership team and then shared it with parents and children and so on. And actually a lot of those terms are within vision statements of schools.

Schools are part of society. They're not isolated from it. So the thing of having a school or a multi academy trust made up of 10 schools or five school where compassion is the forefront, totally, it's not unique. It is understood as that is a mission. Think of integrity, community are very key, to all schools and all institutions.

And if you go through just sort of survey schools, a lot of them would have words to that effect within those.

I mean, particularly I think the stewardship is something. You've written to the government because the government has a responsibility to take that responsibility as for society really. Not just we have a responsibility as heads and you know CEOs of our own institutions but in that stewardship the whole country building this ethos for a country to you know, stand up for those values is very, very important.

And, having responsibilities for, particularly, you know, this summer, about peace and reconciliation. Yes, we, dealt with the riots. People were fast tracked through the justice system, which was very much needed. But that's not the end, that's actually the beginning, that you're going to build up bridges and we're going to have mechanisms by which schools and organizations and once people are released from their prison sentences.

And looking at communities, why are they fragmented?

Why, how can we bring them together?

I'm blessed as a Deputy Lord Lieutenant: eight years we've been running the London Faith Awards, where we bring different faiths together of an evening of celebration. These are not big charities, these are small grassroots charities who come together, have been working for years, you know, for refugees, for people who are facing the cost of living crisis, set up food banks, or people who are helping people with translation.

There are wonderful, wonderful things happening in London. I've seen it with my own eyes. And this whole thing of bringing people together to celebrate and enjoy, that we are one country and we are different faiths. And, but we have this responsibility for each other, as well as our own religious groups as well.

But in Britain, this society is enriched by the different faiths that we have. So totally agree with all the five principles, because I think with any organization, they could be, and actually relate to the Nolan principles as well of integrity, and the stewardship we have as leaders and so on.

So I totally, totally agree. And they should resonate with schools as well.

For sure.

Thank you so much for this conversation today. I hope that as others listen in, that they will draw out the kind of wisdom and insight that I know has been present throughout.

Thank you again for taking part.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Iona.