East Sussex SACRE

Notes of the meeting

Date:		Thursday 15 June 2023
Venue:		Centre 2F / Microsoft Teams
Chairperson:		Councillor Roy Galley
Clerk:		Julie Stevens
SACRE members present: Also present:		Cllr Roy Galley, Cllr Colin Belsey (CB), Cllr Abul Azad, Peter White, Rosemary Roberts (RR), Claire Rivers (CRi), Dr Norman Williamson, Pamela Hartog, Elizabeth Coleman’ Helen Key Barry Blakelock (BB), Claire Ramalli (CRa)
Apologies:		Cllr Steve Murphy, Laura Cooper, Sam Keddie, Kirsty Eydmann; Jon Gilbert; Jefh Davies
Item	AGM		Action
1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4	Welcome/ Introductions & Apologies / Minutes of meeting 2 March 2023 Cllr Galley welcomed everyone present at the meeting. Apologies were noted.  Jefh Davies will no longer be a member of SACRE. ACTION: The Clerk will contact all members who have not attended for more than two meetings to establish if they still wish to remain members of the East Sussex SACRE. There were no declarations of conflicts of interest. Minutes of last meeting agreed as accurate. (i) Budget issue – Cllr Galley/Cllr Belsey have not yet had an appropriate time to raise this. (ii) ACTION: Check minutes of Scrutiny Committee for Cllr Galley re SACRE funds. (iii) ACTION: Clerk to chase Jon Gilbert re signposting to SIAMS reports.		Clerk Clerk
2 2.1 2.1.2 2.1.3 2.2 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.3	Network meetings Secondary – Claire Ramalli Last network meeting was held at the end of March; Stephen Pett led on a training session, and this was the final twilight session with Stephen. There is an RE conference on 12 July at Chailey School hosted by Helen Key and Sam Keddie. This will be advertised on the RE Hub website. ACTION: Barry to send the updated RE lead contact list to Claire Ramalli. Claire Ramalli shared feedback from the NASACRE conference. Claire suggested a discussion at a future meeting around community cohesion, linking to the inter-faith forum. This can be included in the Development Plan. Primary – Claire Rivers Claire and Claire had an inspiring visit to Willingdon Primary to observe the teaching of the RE syllabus. Lois Burton, the lead there, has some excellent resources and they will encourage her to share these with NATRE. ACTION: Clerk to circulate school visit report. The Primary RE Conference took place on-line on 7 June with good attendance and positive feedback. Lat Blaylock led the day. A planned Network day on 8 June still had good attendance covering collective worship and expectations. Future dates: Final twilight session with Stephen Pett on 19 June. Session on 22 June with Kate Christopher on World Values. Synagogue visit on 5 October. ACTION: Get network dates set into the calendar for next year and get RE Today in for an early conference. ACTION: BB will reach out to Willingdon Secondary following the successful visit to the Primary school.		BB Clerk CRi BB
3 3.1 3.2 3.3	School visits Rosemary Roberts gave feedback from the very positive visit to Ratton School. ACTION: Rosemary will send completed good practice pro-forma to Claire Ramalli and Claire Rivers for onward circulation to SACRE. It was agreed that SACRE representatives should be included in the school visits. Two people are sufficient on a visit. ACTION: Barry to set dates for future visits and note that Cllr Galley, Peter White, and Cllr Azad are happy to be included. Helen Key advised that Seahaven and Priory Schools are interested in a visit from SACRE.		RR BB
4 4.1 4.2	GCSE outcomes – Claire Ramalli Sam Keddie will focus on contacting and offer support to those schools with a low cohort of GCSE entries. Sam will ask if they are aware of the RE Syllabus in a supportive role and make them aware of the resources available to them. Barry added that there are some real successes; schools that have entered a full cohort need recognition from SACRE and suggested that Cllr Galley write to the schools to congratulate them and also add in details of the contacts for the Network meetings and also recognise the lack of RE teachers. ACTION: Cllr Galley to write to the schools. Barry added that we must be careful about over-analysing this data, we cannot understand the context of these schools but use this data to offer support to our schools.		Cllr Galley
5 5.1	Quality Assurance Cycle / Five-year Forward Plan Barry explained that this document sets out the regular items that SACRE need to cover at their meetings and the cycle which these items should follow.
6 6.1 6.2	Development Plan Final review at April 2023 and Plan to 2026 A good job has been done over the last few years and we must recognise this in the Annual Report to Scrutiny Committee in March 2024. ACTION: Barry will include the percentage of achievement on the Development Plan. The Development Plan to 2026 is aligned to the Self-evaluation document. It is more ambitious than the previous Development Plan but ties in with the Self-evaluation document.		BB
7 7.1	Self-evaluation toolkit Focus on section 3: The effectiveness of the locally agreed syllabus. To review how we are getting on with the syllabus: - Use registers from network meeting for attendance. - Widen our membership. It was agreed that we are still correct in our judgement of this area. ACTION: Helen Key will ask Sam Keddie to send attendance numbers to Julie following each network meeting. Julie to keep record and share in future meetings.		HK/SK
8 8.1	Role descriptions Role descriptions were agreed. ACTION: Barry to check that Chair and Vice-Chair role descriptions are in the NASACRE Handbook.		BB
9 9.1	Budget update Budget update paper was discussed. (i) Barry asked the meeting what they would prefer to spend the budget on once RE Today support has ended – stay in-house or continue to commission RE Today. (ii) Claire Rivers, Claire Ramalli and Cllr Galley favoured the option of staying with the support of RE Today. (iii) Barry advised we can wait until the decision has been made by the local authority with regards the deficit for year 2024/25 to even the budget out. (iv) Pupil conferences will need to be funded through grants from other sources. We will continue to look at grant funding.
10 10.1	Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (Standing item) No items were raised.
11 11.1	Any other business Pamela advised the meeting that the Jewish Living Exhibition is being displayed at the Jewish Community Centre in Brighton from 20 September for several weeks. Please encourage schools to attend. SACRE members are also encouraged to visit.
	Date of next meeting:  Thursday 16 November 2023 at 2pm Venue: County Hall & MS Teams