The Chair went through the matters arising in the previous meeting minutes:

·       Laura Dexter (KS1 Teacher representative – Furze Platt Infant) had written the articles on trips to Maidenhead Mosque and Synagogue and the book donated by the Bahá'i Faith, which were then added to the newsletter of January 2024.

·       Margaret Smith (Quaker representative) asked who received the newsletter, stating that she had not seen it; to which Anne Andrews replied that it was sent out to all schools and SACRE members. When asked by the Chair, some attendees said that they received it from the schools while others said they had not. The Chair asked for the email circulation to be checked to ensure all SACRE members were included.

ACTION: Laurence Ellis to check to ensure that SACRE newsletters get sent out to members.

·       While the Chair had managed to fill some vacancies, more members had resigned and consequently opened up more vacancies.

The Chair to continue searching for potential candidates to fill the vacant SACRE positions.

·       The Chair decided to defer discussion on an issue relating to the SACRE Development Plan due to the SACRE member who had raised it being absent. 

·       While the NASACRE Resources login details had been recirculated, Laurence Ellis, Democratic Services Officer (clerk), mentioned that the new members would have not received them.

ACTION: Laurence Ellis to resend NASACRE login details to the new SACRE members.

·       Laurence Ellis confirmed that most members had consented to their email addresses being added to the email list with only one not giving their approval. The new members were not added to the list but they agreed to have their email addresses added.

ACTION: Laurence Ellis to add the new SACRE members to the member email list.

·       Anne Andrews confirmed that the invoice for the SACRE Hub subscription for 2023-24 had been paid at end of the financial year of 2023. There would be no invoice for 2024-25 because there was around £20,000 to cover the costs of the Agreed Syllabus review. As SACRE would not be undertaking any other projects, Anne Andrews intended to equally re-distribute the money left over after the Agreed Syllabus review to the six Berkshire SACREs.

At this stage, Anne Andrews revealed that she was intending to retire at Easter 2025. Because of this, SACRE needed to ensure that it spent the SACRE Hub budget as far as it was possible to do so.

·       Regarding the RE scrapbook, Laura Dexter informed that she had it but did not want to supersede Dai Prendiville’s presentation. The Chair suggested to bring the RE scrapbook along to the next meeting in June 2024.

ACTION: Laura Dexter to bring her RE scrapbook to the next SACRE meeting in June 2024.

·       Shahnaz Din (from Lowbrook Academy) had replaced Clare Roberts as the Key Stage 2 Teacher representative.

·       As the plan was to hold the next SACRE meeting at Eton Wick CE First School, the intention was for Karen Waller to do a presentation on Space Makers then.

·       While the Chair declared that the main priority at the moment was the Agreed Syllabus, she nevertheless stressed the importance for SACRE to deliberate on increasing the budget to enable Anne Andrews, as the SACRE Advisor, to undertake monitoring visits to Borough schools alongside SACRE members. Explaining the context, Anne Andrews commented that other SACREs paid their advisors for half-a-day per week or one day per week whereas she herself was only paid by RBWM for five-and-a-half days per year.

ACTION: At a future meeting, SACRE members to debate the

possibility of increasing the budget to enable Anne Andrews to

make monitoring visits to Borough schools alongside SACRE colleagues.

·       The weblink to the RE Hubs website had been shared in the minutes of the previous meeting (www.re-hubs.uk).

·       The Chair reiterated that there needed to be a formal process for faith group representatives to visit schools, including enrolling on formal training, in contrast to the current ad hoc method. Anne Andrews recommended the RE Hub which offered free training. Councillor Coe suggested a webpage on the Council website which had links to the RE Hub as well as content, which Clive Haines stated could be possible. The Chair envisioned that members of SACRE faith groups should be the first point of contact for schools, enabling them – if suitably accredited – to do this themselves or to signpost to a colleague. Anne Andrews added that the training would give the individual an accreditation and enable them to be listed on the RE Hub website. It also provided some accountability and reassurance to schools that they would receive a trained person. The Chair suggested that she would investigate a simple policy related to training faith representatives and then present it to SACRE. In the meantime, she also suggested that SACRE members or anyone they knew from faith communities should undertake training from RE Hubs.

·       The Chair was unable to schedule a time to share the three interviews about RE teaching from Laura Dexter, Barbara Meaney and Thomas Kingsley-Jones with SACRE members.

ACTION: Schedule a time to share the three interviews about RE teaching from Laura Dexter, Barbara Meaney and Thomas Kingsley-Jones with SACRE members.

·       The ‘Worldviews Exhibition’ needed further discussion.

ACTION: Further discussion on a ‘Worldviews Exhibition’ to be held at some point.

·       Ila Gangotra (Hindu representative) had provided the contact details of the organisation to the Chair and Anne Andrews to help formulate/amend the teaching of Hinduism in the syllabus.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That the minutes of the meeting held on 4 December 2023 were approved as a true and correct record.