Worked example: Evaluating Religious Websites

What this is — and the corrections you must read out

A secure Year 9 response, annotated. The corrections table below is the part that matters most: read it aloud before the end of the lesson so that no pupil leaves the room believing Website B. Show the rest after pupils have completed their own grid.

Evaluation grid, completed

Criterion	A	B	C	Evidence for the lowest score
A named author with a stated role	2	0	0	B is signed “Admin” and C says “our team”. Neither is a person you could ask a question.
A date written or reviewed	2	0	0	B has no date anywhere. C says “prices correct at time of going to press”, which dates the prices and not the facts.
Written by, or with, people of that faith	2	0	0	C states outright: “We are not affiliated with any mosque or religious organisation.”
Purpose is to inform, not to sell or provoke	2	1	0	C is labelled “Sponsored guide” and every third paragraph is a product. B is not selling, but open unmoderated comments mean it is partly there for arguments.
Claims are precise enough to check	2	0	1	A gives figures you can test: 2.5% of qualifying wealth, a lunar month of 29 or 30 days, dawn to sunset. B says “facing east” and “forty days” with no source at all.
A way to contact them or report an error	2	0	1	A gives a postal address and a phone number. B has no corrections policy. C has a shop contact form, which is not the same thing.
Total out of 12	12	1	2	A is the only page that survives the grid.

Scores are judged on author, date, purpose and checkability, and every low score has a quotation attached. That is the first and second criterion.

Corrections table, completed

What Website B says	What is actually the case
“praying, which Muslims do three times a day facing east”	Muslims are required to pray five times a day, at times that follow dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset and night. Prayer faces the Ka’bah in Makkah — the direction called the qibla — which from Wales is roughly south-east, not east.
“Zakat, which means giving ten per cent of your income to the mosque”	Zakat is normally calculated once a year at 2.5% of qualifying savings and wealth above a minimum threshold, not ten per cent of income, and it is given to people in need rather than to the building.
“Muslims fast for forty days, and Ramadan is always in March… They cannot eat at all for the whole period.”	Ramadan is one month of the Islamic lunar calendar, lasting 29 or 30 days. Because the lunar year is shorter, it moves about eleven days earlier each year and can fall in any season. Fasting runs from dawn until sunset each day, and the fast is broken every evening.
“Every Muslim has to travel to Makkah every single year”	Hajj is expected once in a lifetime, and only of those who are physically and financially able to make it.

All four errors corrected accurately from the reliable page, with the specific figure in each case. This is the third criterion, and it is the part that protects pupils from taking misinformation home.

Recommendation

Use Website A. It scored 12 out of 12 because it does the two things the others do not: it tells you who wrote it and when it was last reviewed, and it gives figures precise enough to check — 2.5% of qualifying wealth for Zakat, a lunar month of 29 or 30 days for Ramadan, dawn until sunset for the daily fast. It is also written by a Muslim organisation, so it is describing practice from the inside rather than guessing at it.

Do not use Website B. It is signed “Admin”, has no date, and gets four separate facts wrong, including the number of daily prayers. Getting the number of prayers wrong is the giveaway: it is the single most basic thing on the page.

Be careful with Website C. Parts of it are correct — the fast really does run from dawn to sunset and iftar really is the meal that breaks it — but it is labelled “Sponsored guide”, it admits it is not affiliated with any mosque, and its purpose is to sell you a £34.99 box. A page that is trying to sell you something chooses which facts help the sale.

Names one specific weakness in each rejected page and explains why a commercial page is weak even when accurate — the fourth and fifth criteria.

Why this response is secure

It evaluates the pages, not the religion. Not one sentence judges whether Islam is true.
Every score is evidenced by a quotation from the page, including the lines about sponsorship and affiliation that pupils often skim past.
It corrects all four errors with the right figures, so the lesson leaves pupils better informed about Islam and not worse.
It spots that “partly true” is the most dangerous state for a source to be in, because the true parts buy trust for the rest.
It picks out the tell that a subject specialist would notice first — the wrong number of daily prayers — and says why that particular error condemns the whole page.