Our Religious Education Curriculum Intent

Our RE curriculum is designed to engage and enthuse learners.  We believe that it is an essential area of study which ensures that children are well prepared for life in a world where there are a multitude of viewpoints.  We enable the children to make their own informed decisions and to have the confidence to voice their views.  It is a subject for all pupils, whatever their own family background and personal beliefs and practices. 

We aim to develop pupils’ understanding of world faiths and other beliefs by exploring their commonality and diversity.  There is both depth and breadth of study.   The RE curriculum is also about ‘belonging’.  It aims to nurture pupils’ awareness of diversity as well as sensitivity to the questions and challenges that different views and cultures can present.  We all share a common humanity and we share our view of the world with an understanding of others’ views.

We want our children to enjoy RE and develop resilient responses to misunderstandings, stereotyping and division. We want to offer the children a place where difficult or ‘risky’ questions can be tackled within a safe but challenging context. 

RE nurtures SMSC development and pupils’ understanding of diversity.  The children discuss challenging questions about meaning and purpose in life, beliefs about God, ultimate reality, issues of right and wrong and what it means to be human.  A holistic approach to Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development (SMSC), British Values, and Community Cohesion focuses on preparing pupils for life in the 21st century. 

We aim to provide our children with religious literacy where they will develop their knowledge and understanding of Christianity, other religious traditions and world views and explore their responses to life's challenges. This gives pupils the knowledge and skills to flourish both within their own community and as members of a diverse and global society.

We shall help our pupils prepare for their future by:

• Developing awareness of the fundamental questions raised by human experiences, and of how religious teachings can relate to them;
• Responding to such questions by referring to the teachings and practices of religions and other belief systems, relating them to their own understanding and experience;
• Reflecting on their own beliefs, values and experiences in the light of their study.

Impact

Our RE curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression.

The children make progress by knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more. They need to transfer and embed key concepts into their long-term memory and apply them fluently.

Children will make at least good progress from their last point of assessment. 

We measure the impact of our curriculum in the following ways:

• Children demonstrate a positive attitude towards people of any religion and show an understanding of cultural beliefs different to their own.
• They demonstrate respectful behaviour to all and this is transferable outside of school in the wider community and beyond.
• Assessing children’s understanding of each unit’s linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Images and videos of the children’s learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Marking of written work in books.

Implementation

Our curriculum follows Believing and Belonging: The Local Agreed Syllabus for RE in Calderdale, Kirklees and Leeds, 2019.  It is planned and sequenced to develop deep, lasting learning and builds upon prior knowledge, which our children can use today, tomorrow and for the rest of their lives.

During each Key Stage, pupils are taught knowledge, skills and understanding through learning about Christianity and Islam through KS1, adding Sikhism, and Judaism in KS2.   Each unit of work identifies prior learning and shows how this is built upon. 

RE is taught in a block unit within a term to allow suitable links to be made to specific religious festivals taking place or to link in with other topics being taught.  Children gain a deeper understanding of the religion studied through the use of high quality resources/artefacts.

The following skills are used, in order to strengthen the skills and deepen the understanding and knowledge taught: investigating, reflecting, recalling and retelling, exploring, discussing and empathising.  Children can discuss and compare the lives of people they have studied from a variety of different religions.

Attitudes which are fundamental to RE are: curiosity and wonder, commitment, fairness, respect, self- understanding, open-mindedness, critical mindedness and enquiry. These work alongside the SMSC links and British Values implemented within school as a whole.

Assemblies take place across the whole school and in classes; these are delivered by senior leaders, class teachers and our local vicar.  

Visits to places of worship, and visitors representing different religions provide a variety of first-hand experiences for our children, to spark their interest and relate new learning to their own experience.