County council denies claims it broke the law over teaching religion in schools (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

County council denies claims it broke the law over teaching religion in schools

GLOUCESTERSHIRE County Council has denied it has broken the law by allowing some schools to depart from the Gregorian calendar when teaching religion.

The accusation had come from Cllr Andrew Gravells, who said that some secondary schools were being allowed to use the terms CE and BCE - common era and before common era - instead of BC and AD.

That, he said, was not in the National Curriculum and was therefore unlawful.

But this week a county spokesman said that although some schools did use the CE and BCE terms, they did so only because exam boards used them, and because, in the teaching of religious education where a number of religions were being taught, these terms were regularly referred to.

Cllr Charmian Sheppard, education portfolio holder, said: "People need to be given all the facts.

"Publishers, exam boards and schools do use the BCE and CE system of dating but this must be put into context.

"The county council has not issued an instruction to replace the Gregorian calendar and we are very concerned that people may have been misled into thinking that."

She said schools followed the national curriculum which, for history, stated that pupils should be taught to use dates and vocabulary for the passing of time, including the terms ancient, modern, BC, AD, century and decade.