March marches on and we are pleased to bring you the latest UPDATE.

Following the publication of the White Paper last week Executive Director Martin Smith reflects on: "the renewed commitment to strengthening the education workforce, particularly the investment in recruiting 6,500 new teachers and the significant expansion of high‑quality professional development opportunities." 

We are here to play our part as Teaching School Hubs to support you in our delivery of the Early Career Framework, National Professional Qualifications, and evidence‑informed CPD across our region. 

Meanwhile, founder and Lead Coach of The Thinking Academy, Leonie Hurrell shares her thinking behind the "Leadership Skills" course designed to help leaders boost their self-awareness, build connections, and communicate clearly, including the importance of soft skills. Feedback from this week's course is heartening: 
"It was valuable to be reflective and a great opportunity to plan next steps for my leadership' (said one delegate).

With engagement referenced in the White Paper The Engagement Platform (TEP) engage us with their February 2026 findings, drawn from 165,000 pupils across 263 schools and articulate what engagement means. You can take advantage for your School/Trust with a special subsidy for Colyton Foundation partner schools, as well as all other schools.  

This month's interview is a thoughtful piece on Religious Education in schools with Ed Pawson, our SWIFT RE Professional Community Lead and Consultant. A natural enthusiast for the subject, Ed reminds us of the value in networking and building a community through the Professional Community. 

Always in tune with the latest teaching and learning research, Devon Research School (DRS) signposts us to some practical ways to help pupils build independence through explicit teaching and careful scaffolding in the recent Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) blog.

Our sponsor SchoolPro TLC continues the theme of wellbeing and supervision for school leaders and how stress is not just stress anymore - it is a safeguarding issue. The Safeguarding Team are there to provide support and you contact here

Educatering our school catering sponsor share some of their foodie in-school delights - including pizza and cookie making and an imaginative Taste, Touch, Smell – I am a Teacher, Get Me Out of Here session (the proof is in the pics). Contact the Team here to find out how they can support your Catering Teams.

If you have planned absence on the horizon, our sponsor Exeter Supply Partnership are ready to help you get organised and with their not-for-profit ethos you can feel doubly positive. Contact them here for support. 

This should keep us all focused and as spring edges ever nearer, we wish you a rewarding continuation of this Spring Term.

“When I look at my primary colleagues, my fundamental purpose in being an advisor is to help those who do not have RE as their number one subject and have never really studied it and do not feel confident. I would love to be able to feel that I have supported people to enjoy teaching RE and to gain satisfaction.”
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Ed Pawson spent 23 years as a Secondary Teacher of Religious Education and Subject Leader. He is currently the RE adviser to a number of SACREs in South West England, Programme Director for Learn, Teach, Lead RE teacher networks (SW) and the former Chair of the National Association of Teachers of RE (NATRE). Ed currently sits on the Board of the Religious Education Council and is the SW Lead for RE Hubs. He has published work on Islam, Contemporary Issues in RE and spiritual development.

Ed is passionate about the way RE can offer young people a unique opportunity to develop skills of critical evaluation and dialogue and he believes that an education in religion and worldviews plays an invaluable role in enabling young people to become more inquisitive, reflective and engaged members of society.
 
As our Religious Education Professional Community Lead, we invited Ed to share some of his thoughts about RE teaching today.

1. What personal and professional skills and qualities do you bring to your role as SWIFT Religious Education Professional Community Lead?
I was a Secondary Teacher of RE for 23 years in the classroom and as a teacher, I felt connected to pupils and motivated by my subject, and becoming a Subject Leader.
 
About 11 years ago I stopped teaching and became an RE consultant and advisor. I think I bring to the role, all those skills as a teacher in being committed, having a passion and a deep understanding for the subject and being interested in pupils, and fundamentally liking children and wanting the best for them in a rounded way. I believe this empathy is important (as a skill or a quality) in being interested in my subject matter and the pupils and the way that teachers can connect with them.
 
2. What do you find to be most rewarding in this role?
I am interested in networking and building a community. I think that sometimes in school, we lack a sense of belonging as teachers.

I recall when I started teaching, you felt that schools invested in you and that you could build your career and your interest in the subject within the context of the school. However, I think that we have lost a lot of that now and what I find rewarding about this role is being able to connect teachers in a way that has often been lost in not being able to do as much CPD as we might have been able to do in the past. It is often very hard to get subject specific CPD in Schools and Trusts these days because it is not offered.

I think my role as RE Professional Community Lead is linked to the subject content and subject matter and being a bit of an RE geek myself (!), in being able to give people a community who are also interested in knowing more and in working together – which is very exciting for me.

However, thinking about networking. Not all teachers are interested in networking. Personally, I love networking and I think that is why I like doing stuff outside school and the classroom. But some teachers will want to teach a 9 to 5 and that is fine. But the rewarding thing for me is where you are connecting with other people and with your shared interest.
 
3. How do you seek to motivate members in the Group?
When people come along to CPD in their own free time, and I work with the Hub and Network leaders who are doing this in their own time; you have to be very respectful of their needs and to give them space. It is important not to be demanding or certainly, to keep demands to a minimum. It is vital to understand that the fundamental aim is to help children enjoy the subject of Religious Education in school and if teachers want to help in learning more through CPD time, that is brilliant. It is about the motivation: the carrot, and not the stick.
 
4. What do you consider to be the biggest challenge for teaching Religious Education in schools?
Recent reports have shown how a significant number of primary teachers of RE feel that they lack the confidence and knowledge to teach the subject effectively.
 
Teachers often do not know enough about the subject, and that is not a criticism, but an observation as they lack confidence when they fear that they will get it wrong. Hence it is very important to help teachers know more and to encourage them to be more confident in who they are and to be open to making mistakes and not feel like they will be criticised.

The second thing is the lack of status in schools. Traditionally, RE has a low status in schools and there is a real shortage of Teachers of RE in schools. In secondary, for instance, only half of Teachers of RE have it as their main subject. If we compare that to English, nearly 90% of Teachers of English have it as their main subject, which is significant because it means that RE is always on the back foot and a pupil can only expect 50% of the time the teacher will really know the subject very well. This is an important difference from other subjects.

When I look at my primary colleagues, my fundamental purpose in being an advisor is to help those who do not have RE as their number one subject and have never really studied it and do not feel confident. I would love to be able to feel that I have supported people to enjoy teaching RE and to gain satisfaction.
 
Pupils love RE when it is taught well. They absolutely, love it. But I understand that a lot of teachers that I come across, especially in primary, are teaching about Islam or Sikhism or Hinduism, or Humanism, but have never actually met a Muslim or a Sikh or a Hindu or a Humanist. In creating a context where they can meet or at least learn firsthand about the topics that they are teaching is important. There are big challenges, especially in an area like Devon, where we do not have big numbers of diverse people.
 
Finally, we are hoping that RE will become a National Curriculum subject. It is in the balance at the moment; but by March or April, we should know if RE will be put forward to change legislation. All the other subjects are in the National Curriculum. However, RE is not and it never has been and I truly hope that this happens because I think it will raise the status of the subject.
 
5. What would be your greatest hope for Religious Education teaching in schools?
Picking up on the last point about becoming a National Curriculum subject, I think that we currently see a postcode lottery for the subject.
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It is taught brilliantly in some schools and yet hardly exists in others and there is very little benchmarking that Ofsted can do to challenge when they can see that RE is not being taught well. We need these national standards that do not currently exist for RE at the moment. But we would if we became a National Curriculum subject.
 
The recent introduction of a religion and worldviews approach to the subject has transformed the way many pupils respond to their lessons. This fundamental change, seeing people as central to RE, has opened up a more inclusive way to study religions and beliefs. The emphasis on looking at people's real-life lived experience, alongside understanding the structures and features of religious and non-religious traditions, makes it much more meaningful.
 
I think in raising the status of RE it would mean that teachers feel more confident about what they are doing in the classroom and the children would love that, because my experience, is that children, talk about RE as being the only subject where they can share their opinions. Pupils say there is no right and wrong answers in RE That is not quite true. There are right and wrong answers, but what they mean is that they feel listened to and a good Teacher of RE listens to people. Young people need to be listened to, and this is my fundamental mantra for schools.
 
We thank Ed for his insights interview and leadership of our Religious Education Professional Community.
Interview by Jude Baylis, SWIFT Executive Assistant