Religious education curricula for lower secondary students: contextual influences across six European countries

Religious Education (RE) has historically been central to schooling across Europe. However, recent social and political developments have led to change for RE, with little research charting recent variations between countries, according to their context. This paper reveals how national contexts shape lower secondary Religious Education curricula in the six European countries of Bosnia-Herzegovina, England, Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia. Findings suggest that while Western contexts move toward pluralistic and worldview-based RE, Eastern and post-socialist contexts maintain confessional models sometimes linked to national or ethnic identity. While no one approach is flawless, regardless of the context it serves, the value of RE is clear: it is seen to play a vital role in helping young people navigate identity and diversity in increasingly plural societies. At the same time, RE emerges from the paper as a mirror of social change, It is not just about teaching religion; it reflects deeper social shifts like secularisation, detraditionalisation, and demographic change. This highlights how RE school curricula become an indicator of wider societal transformations in Europe. While the study spans six European countries, the findings are likely to be of interest to other countries in their quest to religiously educate their students.