Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education

A Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE), in the United Kingdom, is an independent body which considers the provision of religious education in the area under the jurisdiction of its Local Authority, advising it and empowered to require a review of the locally agreed syllabus for Religious Education (RE). The legal constitution of SACREs is set out in the 1996 Education Act Paragraph 390 subsection (4) The representative groups required by this subsection are—
(a) a group of persons to represent such Christian denominations and other religions and denominations of such religions as, in the opinion of the authority, will appropriately reflect the principal religious traditions in the area;
(b) except in the case of an area in Wales, a group of persons to represent the Church of England;
(c) a group of persons to represent such associations representing teachers as, in the opinion of the authority, ought to be represented, having regard to the circumstances of the area; and
(d) a group of persons to represent the authority.
Each SACRE has wide-ranging statutory powers including: 
Several difficulties with the SACRE process have been recorded. Firstly, the ability of SACRE to represent the interests of the Buddhist community is highly questionable as minority religions often fail to be properly represented at all. In practice, it would take a great deal of trouble to update Agreed Syllabuses to reflect the latest trends in faith community composition or to reflect new pedagogies of RE. Even to monitor the national picture of AS content is difficult as they are often available only locally 