Sam Gower wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone for coming to the RE Leader’s conference this year. This was the first time we have moved away from a residential conference to one day. This was in response to the challenges many of our schools are facing with reduced ability to release staff and a bid to keep costs low. This conference was charged at £25 per head which covered the cost of venue and food. For this particular event, there was no charge for speakers. We were thrilled to have 64 delegates in attendance.
Thank you to those people who took the time to fill in the evaluation form at the end. There were 36 responses so far to this.
We asked three questions:
What were the strengths of the day?
What could have been better?
What could we offer in future conferences?
There was some really positive feedback saying there were many strengths and many things to take away. There were also some very valid points raised about what could have been better, and we will ensure we take this on board for future conferences, using your ideas to inform future training events.
Specific feedback was:
Strengths:
- Prayer and liturgy session
- Ideas for supporting children with SEND
- Assessment session
- Lovely atmosphere
- Nice lunch
- Venue was easy to get to
- Opportunities to network and share with colleagues
What could have been better?
- More specific RE examples for supporting children with SEND
- Specific adaptation of LTP resources for children with SEND
- Have a break for delegates in longer sessions
Suggestions for future conferences
- Input on Godly Play
- Speaker from another diocese on their experience with the RED
- Further work on LTP including supporting chn with SEN
- Using art in RE
- Creativity in RE
- Supporting Catholic formation of children with SEND
This is your conference and it should meet your needs and expectations. It was suggested that one day felt rushed and it was a shame it had been changed. This is not the intention and, as we said from the beginning, any decisions made are made with you. With that in mind, if delegates would prefer to move back to a residential, this would be considered, bearing in mind cost and time for schools. This would need to be a majority decision. With this in mind, we will conduct another vote in the summer term RE briefing, so we have enough time to arrange, whichever decision is made.