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All-Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Education launch enquiry into Religious Literacy

All-Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Education launch enquiry into Religious Literacy

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Education, Chaired by Fiona Bruce MP, has launched a call for evidence on the importance of Religious Literacy.

Religious Literacy is an essential part of life in modern Britain, facilitating effective community engagement and enriching public dialogue.

The aim of the enquiry is to assess how Religious Literacy can be improved though a range of means including, but not limited to, schools and other formal and informal education settings such as workplace training schemes, life-long learning, media and literature, sports and other leisure activities and community forums.

Fiona Bruce MP, Chair of the All-Party Group, said:

“It is becoming increasingly clear to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Religious Education that improved Religious Literacy could make an invaluable contribution to promoting understanding between individuals and groups and cultivating positive community relations in Britain today.

We would particularly welcome constructive and practical comments and ideas as to how Religious Literacy can be improved for the benefit of everyone”

Notes for Editors:

The consultation will open on the 15^th of March 2016 and end on the 12^th of April 2016.

The APPG invites written submissions from individuals and organisations on the following;

1.            What you understand ‘Religious Literacy’ to mean;

2.            The ways in which Religious Literacy enriches the lives of individuals and positively affects their engagement with their local community, society and public life;

3.            How people learn to be religiously literate through school based education, out-of-school activities, the local community, lifelong learning, media and literature, workplace training schemes and other means;

4.            How the development of Religious Literacy in children could be improved within the school context;  

5.            How the development of Religious Literacy in adults could be improved in formalised education settings such as universities, adult education and workplace training schemes;

6.            How the development of Religious Literacy in people of all ages could be improved in settings which are not be considered formal education, such as the local community, out-of-school activities, sports teams, media and literature and other means.

The APPG welcomes submissions to be made in a word document of no more than 1,500 words. It would be helpful if topics are addressed individually, but it is not necessary to consider every topic in your submission. The enquiry will close on the 14th of April 2016 and we request that submissions are sent to penelope.hanton@parliament.uk

Fairer Funding for Schools Annoucement

Fiona Bruce MP said:

‘Whilst we have yet to see the exact detail this is in principle very good news for schools, families and pupils across my constituency. As the local MP, I have fought continuously over several years for a change to the current system, which is so unfair to our local schools. Most recently, I arranged a high-level meeting between the Government Minister, Sam Gyimah MP and head teachers of local schools, in January of this year, to discuss the specific issues facing our pupils and families in this area. It is extraordinary that a school in one part of the country can receive over 50% more than an identical school in another part of the country. Congleton constituency schools, as part of Cheshire East, are located in the sixth most poorly funded authority in the country. It is wholly unacceptable that Cheshire East schools receive £200 less per pupil per year than Cheshire West schools; a total shortfall of over £1,000,000 over five years. This is unacceptable, I am delighted that the Government has put an end to this. As the Education Secretary said, ‘Current allocations are based on circumstances and decisions made over a decade ago…We must now address these historic inequalities.’

‘Under the new formula, which will be consulted on with schools and the public, budgets will be based on need. In addition, the single national funding formula will work on a school-by-school basis, rather than a local authority-led basis, simplifying and stabilising the funding system, giving headteachers more certainly over future budgets. The formula will take into account funding for additional needs and school costs, including those related to school serving rural communities. I am also pleased that, as part of the changes, there will be funding for local authorities towards young people with high-level special educational needs on a fair basis, based on need not location.’

‘This is a significant day for schools across the country – but especially to schools in the Congleton constituency, which have borne the brunt of this unfair and out-of-date system. I am very pleased that our determined campaigning has been successful.’

FIONA BRUCE MP REPORTS BACK FROM AID WORK IN NIGERIA

FIONA BRUCE MP REPORTS BACK FROM AID WORK IN NIGERIA

Fiona Bruce MP spent last week in Nigeria, inspecting UK Aid programmes, in her role as a Member of Parliament’s International Development Select Committee. The Committee’s function is to check on the use of aid money by the UK Government Department for International Development (DfID).

During the week, Fiona and seven cross-party MP colleagues from the Committee met aid workers, teachers, clinicians, and Government officials, including the Vice President of Nigeria and the Speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives.

Fiona Bruce MP said “Checking UK Aid is well-spent is a critical job, as 0.7% of UK taxpayers’ money is now used to support poverty-stricken people in developing countries, as well as to promote global peace and security which directly benefits us here in the UK. In this role, over the past four years, I have worked in many countries, but none so disturbed as Nigeria – we spent several days in the north of the country, where Boko Haram have caused havoc – this is the first country I have inspected aid in where I have had to learn to wear body armour!”

“During our visit we met friends and supporters of the Chibok schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram almost two years ago – the majority of whom are still missing – and discussed what more can be done by the international community to help trace them.”

“We met UK-funded aid workers, including those combatting malaria. Nigeria is the global epicentre of malaria, of which 300,000 children die each year, half of the children who die of malaria globally. The UK has helped tackle this in Nigeria since 2008 and as a result millions of people have been protected from the disease by treatment and distribution of net-beds. The UK-spearheaded scheme reaches even the remotest communities using trained local volunteers, and as a result of this programme the Nigerian Government now has a strategy to try to eliminate malaria from the whole of Nigeria. It was hugely encouraging to hear that hundreds of thousands of lives have been transformed through this malaria-prevention programme.”

“Another incredibly inspiring project which we checked on was for the treatment and prevention of blindness. Incredibly, thirty million people have been protected from blindness through a scheme implemented by the charities Sightsavers and Helen Keller International, funded with UK Aid money. No less than seven diseases are treated simultaneously, much of the work being carried out by locally-trained volunteers at an amazing cost of about 10p per treatment. We were told that in some areas where there had been 80% blindness, tests after treatment of a sample of five thousand people showed that the treatment was 100% effective – not one person had gone blind. This treatment, like the malaria treatment, helps whole communities – if a parent goes blind, they can’t work, their children have to support them, and often lose their education and a chance to earn their own livelihood in the future. Sightsavers reported to us that the UK-funded scheme has resulted in much-improved school attendance. This is a scheme I would like to see implemented more widely.”

“Our Committee also inspected a DfID-funded midwifery training course. Child mortality at birth is very high in Nigeria. Young women, often from remote communities, are being taught midwifery skills through a UK-funded scheme. Whilst the course itself is good, our Committee discovered a grave cause of concern, which is the poor state of hygiene in the hospital in which the students were learning, something we ascertained was not a problem exclusive to this hospital, and which I therefore immediately raised with the State Governor to feedback on our visit later in the week, and to which I will also require reference for improvement in our Select Committee Report to the UK Government which we will produce during the next few weeks, following our visit.”

“A further way in which UK Aid is helping in Nigeria is in the schools. We visited a number of schools and saw that the English-teaching syllabus which has been written by the UK DfID, and is available for every Government school in the country, was being effectively used. DfID is also helping to train teachers in this, as there is a national shortage – many children do not therefore go to school, and the numbers of children to be taught are huge; in one primary school we visited there were over 13,000 being taught in two shifts a day! People in the UK may ask how such work helps – and apart from providing the students with an international language which can improve their job opportunities later in life, ensuring that young people are in education is critical, since if they have nothing to do, they are easily enticed into terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, which has a publically-declared link with international Islamist terrorist group ISIS, so there is real benefit to our peace and security to help young people in this way.”

“One of the schools we visited was in a refugee camp where children receive no Government assistance for their schooling – the open-air school is run by volunteers from the local community and volunteer teachers. Our Committee ascertained that there is a need for more structured support from the Nigeria Government for children in such camps – particularly the smaller ones like this, with approximately 900 people in it. There are 2.2 million refugees – known as internally displaced persons (IDPs) – in Nigeria following Boko Haram attacks, and whilst in larger camps the UN coordinates education provision, there is a need for more support for smaller camps such as the one we visited near Aruja.”

“The good news was that, following a change of government in Nigeria several months ago and increased determination on the part of the new President to improve security, attacks by Boko Haram have been much reduced and Boko Haram itself is being pushed back by Government forces into increasingly reduced territory. Hopefully, at some point in the not-to-distant future, the IDPs who have been forced out of their homelands will be able to go home, and support for this is one of the issues we discussed with Nigerian Government representatives when we met with them at the end of our visit.”

“It is a real privilege to serve on the International Development Select Committee, and to inspect effective aid schemes such as these. Wherever I travel in the world, the effective use of UK Aid is respected, and often copied, and seeing this on the ground benefiting millions of lives of mothers, fathers, and children with hopes and aspirations just like us makes me very proud to be British.”