“Parents are choosing for this to be a part of a child’s, experience at school; Hundreds of thousands of parents are across the state, have said they want this,” David Baker, co-chair of the Multi-Faith RI Network Religious Instruction Network told ABC radio Brisbane’s Rebecca Levingston. RI or Religious Instruction is Queensland’s name for volunteer-taught religion classes in public schools – known as SRE in NSW.
“A local school in my mind, is a partnership between the state, state government, parents and the local community and healthy local schools are where those partnerships are really working well,” said Baker a former Moderator of the Uniting Church in Queensland.
“Churches, faith communities are a part of the local community and they participate in the school program like other community activities, , so we see this as really being able to present, um, to, to children a sense of being connected into a broader community.”
RI has been under attack with moves to remove it from class time backed by delegates at the Labor Party state conference, the Queensland Treachers’ Union and the Queensland Association of State School Principals.
That would kill RI overnight, Karen Grenning, the state chair of Queensland Christian Religious Instruction Network told The Courier Mail. “When the Victoria government decided to do that, we know the numbers fell over-night, effectively killed. There would be no program,” Grenning told the paper.
“We don’t want hundreds of thousands of parents to miss out on an important part of education. That is the consequence.
“We don’t want an extension of school hours. We believe a modern inclusive system has RI in curriculum time.”
The Courier Mail has reported that Minster of Education Grace Grace has said while she is aware of the range of viewpoints on RI there are “no proposed policy changes.”
The opponents of RI had gained prominent place in media. The experience of Grenning and Baker is an example of Christian media voices gaining a right of reply.