Teaching of other faiths 'is sidelining Christianity in schools'

Schools are failing to teach pupils about Christian beliefs in religious education classes, an official study has warned.

The education watchdog also raised concerns that Christian students were being marginalised, with more attention given to other faiths.

Too often, teachers simply focus on Jesus' parables to explore pupils' personal feelings but ignore their religious significance, the Oftsed report found.

As a result pupils' understanding of Christianity is 'unsystematic and confused'.

Poor: Religious education teachers are ignoring Christianity

This is despite the fact that the religion is a core part of the compulsory school course and is taught alongside other faiths including Judaism, Islam and Hinduism.

Inspectors looked at RE in 94 primary and 89 secondary schools, excluding faith schools, between April 2006 and March 2009.

Compared with an Ofsted survey three years ago, the number of lessons classified as 'inadequate' in secondary schools has doubled. Achievement in almost a fifth of secondary schools was rated at this level, inspectors said, compared with one in ten schools in the earlier survey.

Over the last year, the figure has risen to one in three secondaries.

In primaries, the report found that in many schools the quality of RE lessons was 'not good enough', with achievement only rated 'satisfactory' in six out of ten schools.

Inspectors singled out the study of Christianity as being a particular source of concern.

The report said: 'In many cases, the study of Jesus focused on an unsystematic collection of information about his life, with limited reference to his theological significance within the faith.

'Insufficient attention was paid to diversity within the Christian tradition and to pupils who were actively engaged in Christian practice.

'Often their experience was ignored and they had limited opportunity to share their understanding. This sometimes contrasted sharply with the more careful attention paid to the experiences of pupils from other religious traditions.'

The findings come amid growing concern Christianity is being marginalised in Britain.

Senior Church of England figures have voiced their fears Christians are suffering from discrimination.

Ofsted warned that primary school teachers were often confused about how to tackle Christianity. The report said: 'The primary schools in particular were often uncertain about whether Christian material should be investigated in its own right, as part of understanding the religion, or whether it should be used to consider moral and social themes out of the context of the religion.'

In one example given, a primary school used the story of the healing of the blind man to help pupils understand what it would feel like to be blind - rather than to gain any understanding of miracles.

The pupils were shown a Braille alphabet and used a 'feely bag' to explore how difficult it is to be blind.

The main task was to write a poem about what they would miss if they were blind. Ofsted said pupils did not learn anything about religion as a result.

Teachers should have asked questions such as 'did Jesus really perform miracles or are these made-up stories?'

'These questions might have helped to place the miracles in context and focus the pupils' attention on central elements of Christian belief,' it said.

Ofsted urged the Government to review the way RE is taught in schools.

Dr Stephen Parker, senior lecturer in education at Worcester University, said: 'The real problem is not having enough qualified RE teachers.

'You need to have a sophisticated understanding of the subject to be able to properly convey it to pupils.'