title: The inspectorate, inspection, and Religious and Moral Education in Scottish non-denominational secondary schools, 1962-2020
Creators: name: Scholes, Stephen C.
Publisher: name: University of Glasgow
Year: 2025

description: The history of Religious and Moral Education (RME) as a subject within the Scottish secondary curriculum has been well-researched over the last six decades and more. Scholars have identified a range of factors and influences on its development. Scattered across this work is a recognition that Her (now His) Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) and individual inspectors have been influential in the development of RME. Much of this work recognises that a legal bar on the inspection of ‘instruction in religion’, enshrined in the 1872 Education (Scotland) Act and not lifted until 1981, was an influential limitation on the subject’s development.

This study has set out to provide the first comprehensive analysis of the interplay between the activities of HMIE and the development of RME in Scottish non-denominational secondary schools from the 1960s until 2020. The study has sought to address two research questions connected to this overall aim. First, it aims to assess the extent to which and in what ways the work of HMIE has been a factor in the development of RME in Scottish secondary education between 1962 and 2020. Second, it examines what inspectorate documentation can tell us about the development of RME in Scottish secondary schools during this period.

This study is located within the discipline of history of education. It is a curriculum and educational governance history grounded in the objectivist interpretation of primary and secondary sources. The study is based on two broad groups of primary sources: official archival material and printed official sources. The former includes memos and correspondence to and between the Scottish Education Department and inspectorate officials. The latter includes the inspectorate’s five national reports on RME published between 1986 and 2014 and school inspection documentation of fifty-four schools dating between 2016 and 2020.

This study’s central thesis is that, overall, HMIE and its associated activities, including inspection, have been significant and important factors in the development of RME in Scottish secondary education since 1962. Grounded in historical and documentary research, this study qualifies this argument by demonstrating that inspectorate involvement was evident and substantial before the legal bar on inspection was lifted in 1981 and that in this period, inspectorate involvement was integral to the subject’s development and integration into national curricula reforms. This study also challenges existing scholarship around why the legal bar was removed. It demonstrates that improving the quality of RME provision was a central focus rather than examinations in the subject. Finally, the study also shows that after securing RME a position in the 5-14 and Curriculum for Excellence curricular schema, the inspectorate and school inspection have not been effective in continuing to secure positive developments for RME in relation to the extent and quality of provision in schools.