Minutes:
Julie Siddiqi introduced a summary of the Regional Joint SACRE meetings that she had attended since the last meeting of Slough SACRE. During the meetings, discussions were held around the sharing of resources, as well as projects to take forward.
It was confirmed that one such project had been teacher visits, accompanied by a professional photographer, to places of worship in Reading and Wokingham. Photos of the sites were taken and had been distributed to all schools in the area as ready-made teaching aids.
The feasibility of carrying out the same exercise within East Berkshire was now being reviewed. It was likely that such an undertaking would require the use of a minibus, but that the same photographer could be used.
Additional training of hosts at the places of worship was also discussed, which would include the creation of shared documentation including shared booking forms or hosting guidelines setting out what learning outcomes were to be achieved from the visit. Funding for this had been applied for, for a final decision at a forthcoming Trustees meeting on 27th March. If this bid proved to be unsuccessful it was agreed that each of the attending SACREs could contribute a portion out of their annual budget. This was likely to be a portion of the total figure of approximately £2,000.00. In preparation, Robin Crofts was requested to confirm the remaining SACRE budget to the Chair by email.
With regard to the sharing of RE Resources, it was confirmed that St Mary’s C of E School had a significant collection of religious resources, but that it was in need of cataloguing before such resources could be made available. Ashpreet Singh Nainu and Waqar Bhatti agreed to liaise with Linda Lewis to undertake a cataloguing exercise.