Despite a 50% increase in students taking a Religious Studies GCSE, no central government funding has been spent on the subject in the last five years. During the same period, £387 million was allocated to music projects, £154 million to maths, £56 million to science, £28.5 million to English, and £16 million to languages. Also many academies fail to offer the high-quality RE provision that according to Ofsted ‘affords students the opportunity to make sense of their own place in the world’. Almost 500 secondary schools are still reporting zero hours of RE provision in year 11; 34% of academies have no timetabled RE. Teaching RE is a legal requirement for all schools. Maintained schools have a statutory duty to teach it, while academies and free schools are contractually required through the terms of their funding agreement to make provision for teaching it.