- Enhances the awareness by helping children understand the rich tapestry of faiths and cultures they can come across. It helps children reflect upon what they like and what they dislike, what is important to them and why they do the things they do. - Strengthens the mobility of our students by providing them with vocabulary they could use in religious contexts and ceremonies they could attend when abroad, no matter if they do so for personal or professional reasons. I recall the demand of a former pupil of my school. After one year working for Google in Ireland, while visiting Madrid during his summer holidays, he came back to his school and complained because we had taught him English for work and everyday business, not for his personal Christian life: he had not been taught prayers like the Our Father, Glory, and so on. Not everything is positive in the case for RE taught in English. RE is not a compulsory subject in Spain and is taught from a confessional standpoint. Recent data for year 2013-2014 show that a majority of families opt for RE (Conferencia Episcopal Española, 2014): Table 2.2 Children applying for RE in Spain. Infant, Primary and Secondary aggregated. Type of school
Proportion of families who choose RE for their children
State Schools
56,6%
Private Catholic Schools
97,8%
Private non-Catholic Schools
69,8%
Only Catholic RE is widely available in our country (also Evangelical, Islamic and Jewish RE is offered in some schools in our country). According to the above data from the Spanish Conference of Bishops, a high amount of students would be out of a BEP that includes RE taught in English. This is not a minor problem. A BEP including RE through a SL can be implemented only in Catholic Schools where 100% would be inside the project. For this reason, our project is designed for Catholic Schools with a BEP. As shown in the first part of this chapter, in the context of Catholic Schools, RE is not only eligible for CLIL teaching, it can be considered one of the best options for language improvement in terms of vocabulary, grammar structures, diversity of topics and relation to the context. Nevertheless, together with this advantages we may find some bumps in our way to introduce RE in English. Families want CLIL initiatives to last, i.e., to be a long-term program. There are four main barriers for CLIL to be implemented in schools (Mehisto, Marsh, & Frigols, 2008): First of all, there is a need to overcome prejudices and misconceptions about CLIL. Then, we will have to face a barrier for any school administrator: Do I have qualified teachers for teacher RE from a CLIL perspective? Only since 2010-2011 have Spanish Universities begun to offer Bilingual Degrees aimed at BEP schools 12
