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UK News

Church "radically failing" young people on religious education, says expert

by Aaron James

Mark Roques was speaking after the Welsh government announced it may change religious education in the region to help tackle extremism and bring different communities together.

Its Education Minister Huw Lewis has said he plans to change the title 'Religious Education' to 'Religion, Philosophy and Ethics', which would contain "an explicit commitment to allow children to ponder ideas around ethics and citizenship and what it means to be a citizen of a free country," in order to "rise to the challenge of community cohesion".

Mr Lewis' proposals come after an independent review of the Welsh curriculum last year, which found that producing moral, well-informed pupils should be one of its top aims.

Specific details on what would be included and excluded in this new syllabus have yet to be announced. It is possible Christianity may receive less focus, while other religious or non-religious ideas or values may receive more focus.

Mark Roques also said it was vital the new syllabus made Christianity and religious education relevant and applicable to young people, teaching it to them in a way where they could see it playing out in everyday life.

He told Premier's News Hour: "I welcome this change, if there is a genuine desire to connect religion, philosophy, ethics and citizenship. My concern is that very few teachers can actually do this - connect those four things.

"A lot of RE simply doesn't connect with young people, and I think that's something that we have to take on board. What I try to do, is I try to tell stories from the world of celebrity culture and I then connect this beliefs and religion. And I find young people find this fascinating.

"I think churches are also radically failing our young people. It isn't just schools, it's churches. Because churches do not help young people to understand the world around them in the light of the Christian narrative... they simply don't help people to understand the culture in which we live. And I think that's a major challenge for religious education - to do that well and properly."

Listen to Premier's Des Busteed speaking to Mark Roques here:

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