Coalition reforms are leading to a “serious deterioration” of religious education in schools, according to faith leaders. Schools are dropping RE even though it is currently compulsory up to the age of 16. 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

12:01AM BST 09 Jul 2011

Changes to GCSE league tables combined with moves to limit the role of local councils risks undermining the subject’s place in the English education system, it is claimed.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph today, leading Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs call for urgent reforms to stop RE effectively disappearing from the classroom.

The comments come just weeks after a major study revealed thousands of secondary schools were already axing lessons for older pupils – flouting legislation that demands all children should be taught RE until at least 16.

A quarter of schools fail to provide the subject for 14- to 16-year-olds, it emerged, with around a third planning to drop it next year.

In today’s letter, religious groups blamed the trend on the Coalition’s new “English Baccalaureate” – a school leaving certificate that rewards progress in traditional academic subjects.

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Pupils must score at least a C grade GCSE in English, maths, science, a language and either history or geography to gain the baccalaureate.

But critics claim the development undermines the teaching of other subjects, such as RE, music, art, physical education, ICT and design and technology, which are not included.

The letter, signed by figures including the Rev Michael Heaney, president of Churches Together in England, which represents Christian churches, and Farooq Murad, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, calls for RE to be added to the baccalaureate.

“We are gravely concerned about the negative impact current Government policies are having on RE in schools and colleges in our country, due to a lack of strategic thinking about the subject,” the letter says.

It adds: “Recent policy initiatives in relation to GCSE examinations are already leading to a serious deterioration in the provision for RE in many secondary schools… Failure to work with faith communities, along with their partner academic and professional associations, would represent a serious flaw in the Big Society project.”

RE is a legal requirement for all pupils. Even if teenagers fail to take a GCSE in the subject, they should still receive lessons up to the age of 16.

But it is claimed Government reforms risk both the quality of lessons and the number of schools offering the subject.

Today’s letter raises concerns about the expansion of the Coalition’s academies programme, which takes schools out of local authority control and grants head teachers complete independence over admissions, the curriculum, staff pay and the shape of the academic year.

The move risks “undermining the nature and quality of RE”, the letter says, as academies will be able to ignore RE syllabuses drawn up by local faith leaders.

It is the latest in a series of attacks mounted on Government policy towards the subject. The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, said that failure to take religion seriously was “highly dangerous” at a time when groups such as the English Defence League were staging violent protests against British Muslims.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “The English Baccalaureate does not stop any school offering RE GCSEs and we have been clear that pupils should take the GCSEs that are right for them. It is for teachers and parents to help pupils make the right choice.

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Students have a set of modules this afternoon. The options include Basic and Intermediate Cross-Examination with Jeff Gans and Dylan Scher, Counterplans and Permutations with Erik Legried, Critical without the K with Jane Kessner, Debating with Limited Resources with a panel, Flowing with Kanisha Parthasarathy, Free Will with Peter D. van Elswyk, Of Mice and Debaters with Ben Sprung-Keyser, Skepticism with Christian Tarsney, and Thinking Like the Judge with Jon Cruz and Chris Castillo.

All module postings can be found on the Victory Briefs Wiki.

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I just love doing inner child work, both with clients and on myself. It’s fascinating and amazingly effective. In my last article, we looked briefly at the concept of the inner child, and today I want to give you an idea of the work we hypnotists can do to resolve some of the issues and problems that can stem from the “wounded child” that we all carry around inside of us. As always, a little article like this just can’t do justice to the subject, but I hope I can give you enough of an insight into it to make you want to find out more!

The whole idea of inner child work is to heal the wounded inner child that feels they weren’t loved enough. At the same time, we want to encourage and release the positive aspects of the child – spontaneity, and a sense of fun and wonder that helps us to love life and grab opportunities that come our way. Other forms of therapy successfully carry out inner child work, but it can take a lot of time and discussion, and digging around in the past, working through issues from early childhood. Hypnosis on the other hand, is a fantastic tool that can shortcut the whole process, bringing about dramatic change in just one or two sessions.

So what do we do?

We make use of a combination of visualization and memory. Having induced an hypnotic state, the idea is to go back in trance to when we were about 5 years old. This is roughly the time when most of us come to the realization that the world doesn’t revolve around us. The unconscious mind will know what point to lock onto, so there’s no need to pinpoint exactly what age the client should be homing in on.

In most cases I like to take the client back to the home they lived in at that time. They’re asked to imagine they’re standing in the street outside, looking at their old home. As always, engaging all the senses in the visualization helps to make it very real and effective. So taking a little time to establish what they can see, hear, feel will reap rewards and often helps to deepen the level of trance.

The next part of the session will look something like this:

People usually find it fascinating when they do this exercise, because they often recall small details about their early home that they had completely forgotten about. Even if they’re still living in the same house, things change over the years, and they’ll frequently remember little ways in which the house was different back then, whether it’s the detail of a particular wall paper, or the lay out of furniture, or a picture that no longer hangs on the wall.

The idea now, having found that wounded child (they’re often sad and quiet in this first visualized “meeting”, or sullen and angry) is to reassure them that this adult version of themselves has come back to take care of them, to love them and comfort them, to cherish them and give them whatever is missing in their life. You’re basically offering that wounded child exactly what they’re been looking for all these years – the pure, indulgent, unquestioning and unconditional love that couldn’t be theirs in the real world. But we can give this to the inner child because in our inner world we can visualize whatever we need.

If they were desperate for a puppy or a new bike, we can give it to them. If they wanted a room of their own to get away from the mad crush and noise of siblings, or a visit to a theme park we can create that for them. In fact, it’s usual to give the child a gift of some kind. Sometimes people have a clear idea before hand of what they’re going to give the child, but often it’s a spur of the moment decision, or something just “appears” in the visualization which may surprise the client but will be entirely appropriate when they think about it later.

A little time is given to let the client ask whatever questions they want to ask of the child, or vice versa, and for them to discuss whatever they need to discuss, before the client holds the child close and reminds them that they are always a part of them, carried inside them forever, and that they’ll always be loved and cared for. Then it’s time to leave.

We can teach the client how to easily “revisit” the child regularly in just a few minutes a week, or on an ad hoc basis.

What we really do in inner child work is “re-parent” the wounded child. That child sub-personality has been stuck, locked in an unhappy struggle to change the way things were, to re-play history until he or she gets what they wanted or needed. By giving them what they want and need in fantasy (and remember, the unconscious mind can’t distinguish between reality and something we vividly imagine), we can release the old, destructive patterns and insecurities, and move forward in a way that’s positive and appropriate to the adults we have now become.

One caveat I need to add before finishing today. This is a very quick, rough and ready look at the basics of inner child work. What I’ve written above probably sounds warm and fuzzy and kinda sweet… the reality is that if there’s been abuse and trauma in early childhood, this first “visit” to the world of the inner child can be disturbing and distressing. The child may want to have nothing to do with the adult, or the adult may find their inner child repulsive, disgusting or pathetic.

In cases like this, I’ll often set up the “meeting” with the inner child to take place on neutral ground – perhaps a beautiful garden, rather than in the home where the trauma or abuse was experienced. We can get there if it seems necessary in later sessions. In these cases, you may have to work over a longer period and with more “visits”, but the rewards will be even more profound and satisfying.

In short, everyone can benefit from paying some attention to that inner child. I urge you to look into this area in more depth. Both you and your future clients will be glad you did!

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Students have two sets of modules this morning. The options for the first set include Anti-Law with John Lewis, Better Risk Analysis with Diana Li, Contemporary Analytic Politic Philosophy with Christian Tarsney, Debating and Defending Disadvantages with Chris Theis, In the Face of Nonsense with Jon Cruz, Metaethics I: Overview with Peter D. van Elswyk, Kritiks with Bill Neesen, Postmodern Feminism with Jake Gelfand, and The 1AR is Not that Bad with Ben Holguin and David McNeil.

All module postings can be found on the Victory Briefs Wiki.

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