An expert teacher in every classroom – unless it’s RE?

The Government’s Schools White Paper makes a bold promise: every child should benefit from expert teachers. It recognises that pupils miss out when too many lessons are taught by teachers without deep subject expertise. But there is an RE-shaped blind spot in its plans.

New analysis of the Government’s own School Workforce Census data shows that nearly six in ten qualified teachers teaching some RE do not hold a relevant post-A-level qualification in the subject. At Key Stage 3, more than a third of RE teaching hours are delivered by teachers without one. RE specialists are still doing the heavy lifting, delivering 72% of teaching hours, but the subject depends on an unusually large wider workforce of teachers with no recorded RE specialism.

There are practical steps the Government could take. Restoring the teacher-training bursary for RE, which helped strengthen recruitment during the two years in which it was available, would be an obvious start. Restoring funded Subject Knowledge Enhancement courses could also widen the pool of graduates able to train to teach RE, particularly those with strong backgrounds in related disciplines but who need additional subject preparation before beginning teacher training.

The White Paper is right that subject expertise matters. But a policy for “expert teachers” cannot focus only on shortages that are already politically visible while overlooking a subject in which specialist capacity has been rationed for years. If the Government is serious about putting an expert teacher in every classroom, it should restore the tools that can help RE build the specialist workforce it needs.

Read more in the report here