Report from the Scottish Teachers Association of RME (STARME) AGM – 24th August 2023
Chaired by Stuart McKinlay
Our first Annual General Meeting since our formation in 2022. This first year has been a year of making connections and building our initial presence. We have met with and formed working relationships with educational bodies; such as the SQA and Education Scotland, Teaching Unions, faith and interfaith groups, political parties, museums such as St Mungo’s, and charities such as Cullum St Gabriel’s and the Scottish Bible Association. These are relationships, that we will continue to foster in the coming session and hopefully begin to collaborate with to help promote quality learning and teaching in our subject areas. We aim to look at working with such organisations to create or support in the creation of resources to help RME teachers both in secondary and Primary.
Our membership has grown to over 300 members, which is a steady growth that we continue to see grow as word of mouth spreads and we would encourage our members to share the work of the group with colleagues and professional networks.
CLPL
We hosted our first CLPL event that covered Higher RMPS, with input from the Principal Assessor and experienced practitioners of the course. With the reintroduction of the assignment this may be something we would look to host again if there is demand from our members – although we are aware there are a series of Understanding Standards events organised by the SQA.
In terms of the coming session, we are working with David Lundie at the University of Glasgow, to run a CLPL event surrounding the use of AI and the ethical debate that may pose. We are still looking at whether this would be for teachers or pupils or both.
We want to work with groups such as Education Scotland and the SQA, to ensure that we are broadening the CLPL events offered and will continue to share notice of upcoming events that may be of interest to our members.
We are also looking at the possibility of hosting a Festival of Learning or a few in person events in the coming year across the country to support our members in creating connections and sharing good practice. Thank- You to Oliver Morrison and Stephen Scholes for their work with this.
Mentoring Programme
One thing we would like to develop this year is a mentoring programme for RME teachers. Both those new to the profession but also those who feel they may need an extra support. We know many of our teachers are in single person departments and may feel that they could be supported by a more experienced practitioner to guide them with learning and teaching for example support with certificated RMPS.
If this is something any member would be interested in, either being mentored or being a mentor please drop an email to the STARME inbox rmeteachers@gmail.com. We plan to have a small trial programme initially.
Promotion of our Subject
Another thing we are keen to work on this year is the general promotion of our subjects. This not only will include support with the entitlement, but we want to use STARME as a way of sharing all the benefits of RME/RERC and associated subjects. We aim to create a bank of good practice, resources and help for practitioners to promote and grow their subject. Including Careers Prospects, Skills and how the subject fits in with other parts of the curriculum.
Communications and Social Media
We continue to grow our website resources and use X (formerly Twitter as our main communications platform).
We are inviting teachers to send us short reviews for trips. Share with other teachers places of worship, museums, and other great educational days out. What was good about it, what could have been better? Have you found an unusual place to help invigorate the teaching of religion? Out of 5, how many stars would you give your school trip? Offer advice, dos and don’ts for the day (or longer trips). How did the school trip help in the classroom?
It would be great if you could take part in School Trip Advisor. See how to get involved here.
We also have a section “10 questions with. . . ” which we would love to grow to find out more about our members and partners. There is a form with a selection of questions, some RME-related and others based on your own experience or lives, we ask that you chose 10 of these questions to answer and submit for us to publish on our website. There are a quite a number already on the website for you to browse.
To answer the 10 questions – please follow this link – https://forms.gle/22bBG7knFMNkP3pz6
We would love to share more on our X feed about great practice in RME classrooms up and down the country. This is one way of sharing why RME is so important and showcasing all the brilliant things that happen in RME classroom as well as inspiring each other.
Please tag @teachersofRME into your tweets of great pieces of work, beautiful displays and anything relevant to our community.
Thank You to Nicola Mathews and Paul Fuller for their support in the upkeep of the website and Social Media.
Treasurer Update
As a new organisation, we have minimal financial reporting for this year. We were grateful to be given £100 to help us cover basic expenses on 11.10.22 from the assets of the SJCRME. The office-bearers have to date not claimed any expenses for the work they have done for STARME, meaning that our funds remain at £100.
It is expected that this will change in the coming financial year.
We continue to explore the options for our structure, examining different possibilities for some form of incorporation to give us a more stable basis for our ongoing work, and will report back on this in due course.
If any members have any experience of setting up a similar organisation or incorporation that could help with this please get in touch (rmeteachers@gmail.com)
Thank you to Michael Marten for his work this year as treasurer.
Management Committee
As we continue to grow our membership and our plans continue to grow, we are looking for more members to join our management committee. This is currently made up of secondary teachers of RME and academics in associated fields. We would love to include a broad range of views and experiences on the management team. We thank all who have given up their time to be on the management committee this year to get STARME up and running.
If this is something you are interested in joining and want more information please email rmeteachers@gmail.com
Keep in Touch
We are here to support you, our members with any issues or support you may require. Please keep in touch with us if you have any concerns, queries or questions about RME – whether it be in your context or nationally.
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