Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU) has successfully bid for a £15,000 pilot project, allowing six local schools to develop an ongoing friendship with a trained 'faith practitioner', learning more about them and their religion & culture. The Learning About Religion through Dialogue (LAR-D) programme is designed to nurture local Religious Education (RE) teachers, strengthen RE teaching and encourage pupils to engage in direct dialogue with faith practitioners. The six chosen schools will be allocated a specific faith member who will then visit and become a ‘friend’ of the school for 6 months. The schools can then craft sessions for their pupils with the practitioner to help them discover more about faith and culture. The LAR-D programme is based around the concept of enquiry-based-learning (EBL) which stems from the RE-searchers programme. It encourages pupils to research and explore ideas for themselves by making direct contact with people of faith, in order to converse with them about matters that are of concern or interest to them. This allows the pupils to form a relationship with the faith-members, and engage in ongoing conversation providing wider learning, rather than merely asking questions and getting answers. If you’re interested in a future exploring and discussing religion then our Theology courses and RE teaching pathways could be for you. Visit our website or contact our Enquiries Team today for more information.