Junior RE Conferences give Newham pupils a place where they can discuss spiritual and moral issues that are important to them. Every school has the opportunity to elect or send six pupil representatives from Year 5 and a member of staff to a Junior RE one day conference. The hope is that these children will be representatives of the different religious and secular world views. These conference days provide schools with evidence of how they: 

• Promote dialogue and understanding between children of differing religious and non-religious beliefs, backgrounds and cultures, supporting collaborative work
• Contribute to community benefit, as it has been developed from real children’s concerns and interests. It seeks to address these concerns as well as empower them in solving problems and creating advice for schools.

Junior RE Matters provides a place for serious discussion and debate across schools. It gives schools a way of capturing children’s thoughts and suggestions on important moral, religious and spiritual issues, and provides a ‘gifted and talented’ opportunity in RE at Key Stage 2.  

In 2025 our theme will be ‘Respect' focusing on 'compassion, the conference day will be using Philosophy for children (P4C) to engage pupils with this theme.  The pupils will go on to learn what different religions as well as non-religious worldviews think about the importance of empathy and compassion in our communities.  It will give the pupils opportunities to express their thinking creatively through the use of the expressive arts.

RE Matters will co-ordinate the conference day itself for a cluster of schools.  Schools already working in clusters can purchase this package collectively or RE Matters will place schools together in informal clusters.

Examples of students work

• I have enjoyed seeing the children excited about RE
• Been great to see and participate in lively RE exercises that the children enjoyed
• The day was well organised, and made a nice change, lovely to see the children so involved in RE
• We have loved learning new strategies that we could apply back in class for finding out about different views of people
• I have leant new ways of teaching skills and today has further my knowledge and practice in teaching RE
• Excellent activities to use and apply in other lessons – practical demonstrations were very clear