Definitions: Wales (Estyn)

Estyn – Her Majesty’s Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales - has produced the extremely useful 'Aiming for Excellence in Religious Education'. Whilst its focus is on RE at Key Stages 1 and 2, it does make important points worthy of wider consideration:

It states that very good and good teaching is found where teachers:

• have a good knowledge and clear enthusiasm for the subject;
• adopt a suitable range of strategies, including individual, group and whole-class activities;
• develop pupils’ skills and knowledge through stimulating narrative, good questioning and effective prompts and interventions;
• use an appropriate range of resources to cater for pupils' developing needs and abilities;
• plan effectively to use visitors from, as well as visits to, the immediate and wider locality and community in order to develop pupils' knowledge, understanding and skills;
• plan learning activities that consolidate and develop pupils' communication, mathematical and information technology skills.

In addition, a review is currently being conducted by DELLS (formerly ACCAC), that aims to ensure that the content of RE is up to date and relevant for today and that there is a clear progression in skills in the subject as children go through the different stages of their education.

The existing ACCAC exemplar level descriptions are also undergoing reveiw, but it is expected that there will be few changes. Click here to go to the current exemplar level descriptions for Wales >>