When I first started teaching GCSE Religious Studies at my current school in 2022, I had a sea of 29 inquisitive Year 10 students looking up at me. Those 29 students represented the GCSE RS cohort.
Jump forward to September 2026 and the picture looks rather different. We now have four thriving Year 11 groups and another four in Year 10, with 217 students studying GCSE RS across Key Stage 4.
This growth has taken place despite RS continuing to compete with a wide range of other subjects within the options process. As I move into a new role as Assistant Head of Sixth Form and hand over leadership of the department, it has prompted me to reflect on a question I have discussed with our new Head of RE: what actually made more students want to continue studying RS beyond Year 9?
There is no single answer. I certainly couldn’t point to one intervention and claim that it caused the increase. Instead, I think our growth has been the cumulative result of curriculum, teaching, relationships, experiences and consistently communicating the value of the subject.
Recruitment starts long before options evening
As any curriculum leader will know, recruitment can be difficult. This can be particularly challenging for RS, where we sometimes find ourselves battling misconceptions about what the subject actually involves.
For that reason, I don’t think the promotion of GCSE RS begins at options evening. By then, much of the work has already been done.
Students aren’t suddenly persuaded to value RS in Year 9. Their perception of the subject has been developing since their first lessons in Year 7. We therefore begin Year 7 by exploring why Religious Education matters, the skills students will develop and the relevance these skills can have beyond the classroom.
From there, we have worked hard to ensure that our KS3 curriculum is intellectually interesting, appropriately challenging and representative of what studying RS actually involves. Units exploring questions such as the existence of God, the problem of evil, crime and punishment, and other philosophical and ethical issues allow students to see that RS is much more than simply learning facts about religions.
Make RS intellectually serious
One of the principles underpinning our curriculum is that students should feel they are being treated as emerging adults.
RS provides an extraordinary opportunity to do this. Whether exploring philosophy, ethics, religion or contemporary issues, students can encounter genuinely difficult questions on which intelligent people profoundly disagree.
At the heart of this is the idea that students’ voices, opinions, arguments and ideas matter.
We don’t want students to shy away from making their views known. Equally, we don’t want “that’s just my opinion” to be the end of the discussion. Students are encouraged to justify their beliefs, values and arguments, listen to competing perspectives and be willing to have their thinking challenged.
The aim is to create an inclusive, stimulating and supportive classroom in which students feel safe enough to share what they think, but equally safe enough to be challenged on why they think it.
When this works, RS becomes a subject in which students don’t simply learn content. They learn to think.
Great teaching is your best recruitment strategy
Perhaps the most obvious conclusion I have reached is that great teaching is one of our best recruitment strategies.
Students are more likely to continue with subjects they enjoy, in which they feel successful and where they are appropriately challenged. Parents and carers are also more likely to support a subject choice when they have confidence in the quality of teaching their child will receive.
Learning isn’t always easy, nor should it be. But effective teaching can give students the knowledge, confidence and support they need to experience success.
An important part of this is relationships. I believe the relationship between student and teacher is one of the things that enables our subject to thrive. High expectations are important, but so too is creating an environment in which students know their teachers are invested in their success.
Over recent years, this has been accompanied by strong GCSE outcomes, with our proportions of students achieving grades 4+ and 7+ consistently comparing favourably with national figures. Results aren’t the reason students should choose RS, but sustained academic success can help build confidence among students and families that RS is a subject in which students will be challenged, supported and able to succeed.
Let your students sell the subject
Of course, eventually options evening does arrive.
Like most departments, we attend the usual events, speak to parents and students, display work and explain the course. However, when I reflect on what has been particularly effective for us, the answer really isn’t the teachers!
It’s the students.
We developed a group of RS Ambassadors whose role includes talking to prospective students and their parents or carers about studying GCSE RS.
There is one important rule: they must answer questions honestly and professionally.
I can tell a Year 9 student that GCSE RS is brilliant, but I’m also their RS teacher. They know I’m hardly an impartial observer! Hearing directly from a student is different.
Our ambassadors can explain what lessons are actually like, what they find difficult, what they enjoy and why they chose the subject themselves. Prospective students can ask questions they might not necessarily ask a teacher.
It remains a privilege to hear students explain later that one of these conversations influenced their decision. Some had been considering History, Geography, Sociology or another option, but a short conversation with an RS Ambassador encouraged them to think again about what RS could offer them.
Never underestimate the power of students advocating for your subject.
Show students what GCSE RS actually involves
Alongside options events, we offer Year 9 students a GCSE RS enrichment lesson.
Rather than simply telling students about the specification, we want them to experience the subject. We tend to use Crime and Punishment as the basis for this because it creates opportunities for discussion, disagreement and evaluation while giving students a genuine taste of GCSE-level study.
During the session, we explicitly explore what students actually do in GCSE RS: constructing arguments, analysing ideas, evaluating competing positions and writing persuasively.
Our RS Ambassadors also support these lessons. They explain why they chose the subject and answer questions from Year 9 students about their own experiences.
We also make the bigger picture explicit. We discuss connections with subjects including Politics, Law, English, History, Psychology and Philosophy, alongside examples of the routes former students have taken.
The purpose isn’t simply to persuade students to pick RS. It is to allow them to make an informed choice based on a much clearer understanding of what the subject actually offers.
Create experiences beyond the ordinary classroom
We have also tried to ensure that students’ experience of RS extends beyond their normal lessons.
One example has been developing a strong partnership with Souster Youth, a Christian charity that supports some of our KS3 and KS4 teaching.
In Year 9, for example, they lead a session based around Ultimate Questions. Students explore big questions relating to religion, life, philosophy and ethics, sharing their own perspectives while responding to counterarguments from their peers and the visiting team.
The lively discussion that emerges from these sessions does excellent service to the subject. Students experience a version of RS that is open, intellectually challenging and willing to engage seriously with disagreement.
Again, the intention isn’t a direct sales pitch for GCSE RS. It is about creating memorable experiences that demonstrate what the subject can be.
Every lesson is recruitment
Ultimately, the growth from 29 GCSE students to more than 200 wasn’t produced by a clever recruitment campaign.
Nor can I isolate precisely how much difference was made by the curriculum, our teaching, RS Ambassadors, enrichment lessons, external partnerships, examination outcomes or any of the other things we have developed.
My suspicion is that all of them have mattered … not individually, but cumulatively.
Subject uptake is, to a significant extent, the downstream consequence of the experience students have before they ever complete an options form. If students consistently experience RS as intellectually challenging, relevant and enjoyable; if they feel successful and supported; if they are taught by people who clearly value their subject; and if they see older students enthusiastically advocating for it, then choosing to continue studying RS becomes a much more natural decision.
Options evening matters. Promotion matters. Recruitment matters.
But perhaps the biggest lesson I have learned over the last four years is much simpler:
The best time to recruit students for GCSE Religious Studies isn’t options evening. It’s every lesson they experience before it.
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