They’re having difficulty getting good RE teachers at the minute. Most of them are not trained in the area and are (for example) old PE teachers that can’t run up and down the field any more so they think they will teach a bit of RE insted. They don’t know what it’s on about so they teach it crap. Hence why the cash is there to give. It’s only been in recent years as well because the government are finally starting to see the importance of learning about other religions. It’s a shame it takes stuff like Sept 11th and July 7th to make them see how important it is.

I can’t believe you get all that extra cash though, but I suppose it is difficult to recruit high school teachers nowadays. At least when you get the job though you’ll have pretty good security – I can’t remember a local authority ever making hundreds of teachers redundant.