Culham St Gabriel’s Trust is an independent endowed charity committed to excellence in religious education, through research, development and innovation. Our vision is for high-quality, broad-based religious education, exploring religions and beliefs openly, rigorously, critically and reflectively. We are active in academic and professional research in religious education, and spiritual and moral development. We operate the 3forRE Scheme for teachers of RE who wish to take Masters programmes, we support the research element of the RE Quality Mark, and we are developing proposals for a research strategy for RE. In partnership with others, we support the RE community’s PR and recruitment campaigns and the recently established commission to address RE’s legal, policy and educational basis. In the last two years we have circulated major grant calls on assessment in RE and primary RE. We are leading agents of change and improvement in RE. We work independently and in partnership with others.
Contributions to RE
The specific ways in which we support RE teachers include:
- Owning and managing the website RE:Online, the largest free-access, quality-assured online resource covering a wide range of religious and non-religious world views
- Offering the Teach RE course to aspiring trainees, current trainees and teachers, and teaching assistants
- Supporting teachers of RE in access to classroom-relevant, affordable Masters programmes in selected universities through the 3forRE Scheme
Our vision is:
- Teachers and other providers of religious education, in all sectors and contexts, and at all levels of education, are supported, connected, challenged and professionally developed in their knowledge, understanding and practice of RE, school worship, spiritual and moral development and school ethos and leadership. They access this support, connection, challenge and development through excellent resources, networks offering new knowledge, and inspiring, rigorous conferences, courses and other events, provided directly or indirectly by CSTG.
- Faith/belief communities, parents, governors, school leaders, employers and policy makers are positively aware of the benefits that high-quality religious education, school worship, spiritual and moral development, school ethos and leadership can bring to children, community, school, business and nation. They work with others in creating new opportunities for teaching and learning. They are effective, publicly and pro-actively, as advocates for RE, facilitated directly or indirectly by CSTG and its key partners.