The Big Ideas Project and the Religious Education Council’s (REC) Commission on RE both began in 2016. Both initiatives were created due to shared concerns about the future of religious education (RE) in schools.
The Big Ideas Project had a significant influence on the REC’s work, particularly the National Statement of Entitlement (NSE).
Here’s a breakdown of the timeline and key connections between the two:
- 2016: The Big Ideas Project and the REC’s Commission on RE begin.
- 2017-2018: The Big Ideas strongly influence the first and second versions of the NSE, which are included in the Commission’s reports.
- 2019-2020: While the Big Ideas Project starts creating classroom materials, the REC continues its work. They focus on the term ‘Worldview’ and the proposed name change for the subject to ‘Religion and Worldviews.’
- 2022: The REC releases a third version of the NSE in a draft handbook. The author, Stephen Pett, explicitly states that the Big Ideas influenced this version. The Big Ideas Project, in turn, supports the general direction of the ‘Worldviews Approach’.
- 2024: The final Handbook for Curriculum Writers is published. It provides a comprehensive explanation of the REC’s ‘Worldviews Approach.’ Two of the three planned curriculum frameworks, which show how to put the NSE into practice, are also released.
- 2024 (and beyond): The Handbook for Curriculum Writers contains the fourth (and possibly final) version of the NSE. It’s largely the same as the third version. It has 11 statements divided into three sections: Content, Engagement, and Position. The six Big Ideas align most closely with the six Content Statements, but the Big Ideas Project also endorses the Engagement and Position sections. These sections are about how students study the content and how that study helps them reflect on their own personal worldviews. Engagement and Position can be found implicitly and sometimes explicitly in the exemplar units of work developed by the Big Ideas Project.
Essentially, the Big Ideas Project and the REC’s work have been developing in parallel and have continuously influenced each other, leading to the current ‘Worldviews Approach’ and the latest version of the National Statement of Entitlement. The table below illustrates how the six core statements of content in the fourth and final version of the NSE may be matched pretty closely with the six Big Ideas, particularly as a guide for the selection of appropriate content for pupils to study.
| National Statement of Entitlement | Big Ideas for RE |
| NSE a. Nature/formation/expression What is meant by worldview and how people’s worldviews are formed and expressed through a complex mix of influences and experiences.Expanded statement: The nature and variety of worldviews, and how people’s worldviews are formed through a complex mix of influences and experiences, including (for example) rituals, practices, texts, teachings, stories, inspiring individuals, the creative arts, family, tradition, culture, and everyday experiences and actions. How these may also act as ways of expressing and communicating worldviews. | Big Idea 2: Words and Beyond People often find it difficult to express their deepest beliefs, feelings, emotions and religious experiences using everyday language. Instead, they may use a variety of different approaches including figurative language and a range of literary genres. In addition, people sometimes use non-verbal forms of communication such as art, music, drama and dance that seek to explain or illustrate religious or non-religious ideas or experiences. There are different ways of interpreting both verbal and non-verbal forms of expression, often depending on a person’s view of the origin or inspiration behind them. The use of some non-verbal forms of communication is highly controversial within some religious groups, particularly their use in worship or ritual. ‘What is meant by worldview’ is also examined in Big Idea 1 and Big Idea 6 through the age-related statements. |
| NSE b. Organised/individual How people’s individual worldviews relate to wider, organised or institutional worldviews.Expanded statement: How people’s individual worldviews relate to wider, organised or (sometimes) institutional worldviews. For example, how individual worldviews may be consciously held or tacit; how they develop in relation to wider communities; how individual and organised worldviews are dynamic; the degree to which individual worldviews may be influenced and shaped by organised worldviews. | Big Idea 6: The Big Picture Religions / worldviews provide comprehensive accounts of how and why the world is as it is. These accounts are sometimes called ‘grand narratives’. They seek to answer the big questions about the universe and the nature of humanity. These narratives are usually based on approaches to life, texts or traditions, which are taken to be authoritative. People interpret and understand these texts and traditions in different ways. |
| NSE c. Contexts How worldviews have contexts, reflecting time and place, are highly diverse, and feature continuity and change.Expanded statement: The fact that worldviews have contexts, reflecting their time and place, shaping and being shaped by these, maintaining continuity and also changing; ways in which they are highly diverse and often develop in interaction with each other. (This applies to organised worldviews as well as to individual worldviews.) | Big Idea 1: Continuity, Change and Diversity Religions / worldviews involve interconnected patterns of beliefs, practices and values. They are also highly diverse and change in response to new situations and challenges. These patterns of diversity and change can be the cause of debate, tension and conflict or result in new, creative developments. Big Idea 1 also considers what is meant by ‘worldview’ and ‘religion’ in the age-related statements. |
| NSE d. Meaning and purpose How worldviews may offer responses to fundamental questions raised by human experience.Expanded statement: Ways in which worldviews may offer responses to fundamental questions raised by human experience, such as questions of ultimate reality, existence, meaning, purpose, knowledge, truth, creativity, identity and diversity. Ways in which worldviews may play different roles in providing people with ways of making sense of existence and/or their lives, including space for mystery, ambiguity and paradox. | Big Idea 4: Making Sense of Life’s Experiences Many people have deeply felt experiences, which they may refer to as being ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ or simply part of what it means to be human. These experiences can take place in both religious and non-religious contexts and may produce a heightened sense of awareness and mystery, or of identity, purpose and belonging. The experience is sometimes so powerful that it transforms people’s lives. As a result, people may change their beliefs and allegiances and on rare occasions the experience of a single person has led to the formation of a new religion / worldview. How organised religions / worldviews offer responses to the ‘big questions’ is examined in Big Idea 6. Big Idea 4 focuses more on individual and personal experience, though not ignoring the community context. Ritual / ceremony is also examined as experience as well as expression (Big Idea 2). |
| NSE e. Values, commitments and morality How worldviews may provide guidance on how to live a good life.Expanded statement: Ways in which worldviews may provide a vision of, and guidance on, how to be a good person and live a good life, and may offer ideas of justice, right and wrong, value, beauty, truth and goodness. Ways in which individuals and communities may express their values through their commitments. | Big Idea 3: A Good Life Many people, whether religious or not, strive to live according to what they understand as a good life. Religious and non-religious communities often share an understanding as to the sort of characteristics and behaviours a good person will seek to achieve, as well as dealing with what is, or is not, acceptable moral behaviour. The ideal is usually presented in the lives and character of exemplary members. There are points of agreement and disagreement over the interpretation and application of moral principles both across and within different religions / worldviews. |
| NSE f. Influence and power How worldviews influence, and are influenced by, people and societies.Expanded statement: Ways in which worldviews influence people (e.g. providing a ‘grand narrative’ or story for understanding the world) and influence the exercise of power in societies (e.g. on social norms for communities, or in relation to conflict or peace-making). How society and people can also influence and shape worldviews. | Big Idea 5: Influence and Power Religious and non-religious communities interact with wider society and cultures. These communities affect societies by shaping their traditions, laws, political systems, festivals, values, rituals and arts. The patterns of influence vary significantly in different societies and at different points in time. Some societies are influenced predominantly by one religion / worldview, others by several or many. Religions / worldviews often appeal to a highly respected authority or vision, and this can have significant impacts on societies and cultures, whether positive or negative. The idea of ‘grand narrative’ is explored in Big Idea 6. |
The correspondence is not exact, but there is a high degree of overlap, and we consider that the Big Ideas programmes of study, together with the exemplars already developed, provides curriculum developers and teachers with a model of how the statement of entitlement might be fulfilled in the classroom.
What really matters in RE / Religion and Worldviews
What both the REC and Big Ideas programmes promise to provide is a positive response to recent commentaries on the state of education, attempting to find ‘big ideas to guide the teaching and a plan for ensuring the learning’ (Wiggins & McTighe), while managing the content of the curriculum so that there are ‘fewer things in greater depth’ (Tim Oates), ‘cumulatively sufficient and collectively enough’ knowledge being gained (Richard Kueh) and that ‘content selection and curation… show clear understanding of how a curriculum subject is conceived and represented’ (David Lewin). There is agreement too, that ‘the criterion for selecting such material needs to be based upon educational concerns’: with young people at the centre (Pat Hannam).
The ‘Religion and Worldviews Approach’, as exemplified in both the National Statement of Entitlement and Big Ideas for RE, marks ‘a significant shift in the subject. It reshapes the subject away from gathering information about the ‘world religions’ towards an understanding of how worldviews work in human experience, including the pupils’ own’ (Pett, 2024:12).
RE should be both academically rigorous and personally inspiring: ‘a subject for all pupils, whatever their own family background and personal worldviews. It supports them in not only understanding and responding to the world in which they find themselves but also considering the world as they would like it to be. It supports them in learning to live well together in a diverse society’ (Pett 2024:18).
Sources
Benoit, C., Hutchings, T. & Shillitoe, R. 2020. Worldview: A Multidisciplinary Report. REC. www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/5-REC-Worldview-Report.pdf
Big Ideas for RE. 2025. https://bigideasforre.org/
Commission on Religious Education (CoRE). 2017. Interim Report: Religious Education for All. REC. www.commissiononre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Commission-on-Religious-Education-Interim-Report-2017.pdf
Commission on Religious Education (CoRE). 2018. Final Report. Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward. A National Plan for RE. REC. www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/1-Final-Report-of-the-Commission-on-RE.pdf
Hannam, P. 2021. ‘Religious education syllabus development and the need for education theory’ in Journal of Religious Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40839-021-00154-6
Kueh, R. 2021. see Ofsted Research Review: Religious Education. www.gov.uk/government/publications/research-review-series-religious-education/research-review-series-religious-education
Lewin, D. 2019. ‘Toward a Theory of Pedagogical Reduction: Selection, Simplification, and Generalization in an Age of Critical Education in Educational Theory 68: Issue 4-5. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/edth.12326
Oates, T. 2021. ‘fewer things in greater depth’, see, e.g., ‘Outline principles for the future of education’ at www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiprTSFyJAA
Pett, S. 2022. Religion and Worldviews in the Classroom: Developing a Worldviews Approach – Draft Handbook (REC). https://www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/projects/draft-resource/
Pett, S. 2024. Developing a Religion and Worldviews approach in Religious Education in England and Wales: A Handbook for curriculum writers. London, REC: https://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/resource/religion-and-worldviews-approach-handbook/
Religious Education Council. All resources relevant to the Religion and Worldview Project to date, including those listed separately by author here, can be found at https://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/rwapproach/
Tharani, A. 2020. The Worldview Project: Discussion Papers. REC. www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Worldview-Project.pdf
Wiggins, G.P. & McTighe, J. 2005. Understanding by Design. 2nd edition. Alexandria, VA. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Wintersgill, B., Cush, D, & Francis, D. 2019. Putting Big Ideas into Practice in Religious Education. REonline. https://bigideasforre.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/R2-Putting-big-ideas-into-Practice.pdf