Religious (and Moral) Education in Primary Schools

In Scotland, Religious Education (RE) in public schools comprises two programmes, namely, Religious and Moral Education (RME) and RE offered in non-denominational and denominational (de facto Catholic) schools, respectively (Conroy, 2014). In the primary sector, RME offered in the country’s 2,056 non-denominational schools is based on a Christian Protestant framework but with a strong multi-faith and moral component. On its part, the Catholic sector—comprising 312 primary schools—offers catechetical RE, which, despite its Catholicity focuses some attention to “other” religions. In addition to Catholic schools, there are other state-funded denominational primaries in Scotland (one Jewish and three Episcopalian) that use the RME curriculum (Matemba, 2015).