Religious education, long associated with dusty old books and dusty old teachers, is breaking into the era of flashing screens and multimedia jargon. High time too, according to RE professionals who have seen the catchy world of computers pass clean by on the other side of the road.
An analysis of the Government’s own statistics compiled for the Culham College Institute shows that only 2 per cent of secondary and 8 per cent of primary schools use computers in their RE lessons. All schools use electronic media in secondary English and maths, according to the figures, and three quarters in geography. Music, where only half find a place for IT, came second last, but still way ahead of RE.
There has been some hefty Government investment in CD-Rom - the main tool for displaying teaching material on screen. Secondaries got Pounds 4 million in 1992 and in 1993. Primary schools received Pounds 4.5 million for purchasing machines in 1994 and the same amount again for development-work in 1995.
Tony Parfitt, the educational consultant and former HMI who undertook the analysis for Culham, says that the low take-up in RE is partly a reflection of schools’ lack of interest in the subject.
The absence of suitable software has also been an issue. Some 500 CD-Rom titles were reviewed by the National Council for Educational Technology in 1995: only three were specifically for RE and one of those was an electronic Bible. However, the past few months have seen a burgeoning of new material, including Culham’s Living Stones, an illustrated history of Christianity in Britain. This was followed by the CD-Rom version of Lion Publishing’s popular textbook, Handbook to the Bible. BT’s CampusWorld has also got in on the act, putting material for RE and collective worship on the Internet.
When it comes to television screens, the BBC has this week launched a five-year schedule of RE programming. This will more than double both the output of new programmes and the time allotted to them, a response to increasing interest in the subject according to Geoff Marshall-Taylor, the executive producer. Which is in turn a response to Government-led initiatives like the new model syllabuses.
Tony Parfitt believes that such initiatives have a value that goes beyond the individual lesson. “IT is an important part of young people’s lives. It associates RE with modernity and by implication it shows that the subject has a relevance for today; that it’s not trapped in old- fashioned practices. ”
But while pupils may be familiar with the vagaries of CD-Rom, some teachers, he says, may be less so: “There’s a need to support teachers in learning to use IT effectively. There are also issues of resource management at stake: RE does not yet have sufficient clout in terms of getting access to the computer room or even easy access to a television.”
