RE (Religious Education)
Subject Leader: Ms J Birch
“Religious education in a Church school should enable every child to flourish and to live life in all its fullness. (John 10:10).
It will help educate for dignity and respect encouraging all to live well together. Such an approach is offered through a commitment to generous hospitality, being true to our underpinning faith, but with a deep respect for the integrity of other religious traditions (and worldviews) and for the religious freedom of each person.”
(The Church of England Education Office, Church of England Vision for Education: Deeply Christian, Serving the Common Good. 2016)
Implementation
We use Understanding Christianity and SACRE resources as tools to teach our explicit Religious Education curriculum. Both resources, teacher knowledge and expertise, provide a balance of theology, philosophy and human/social sciences.
The resources are used to create a spiral curriculum taught as a two -year rolling programme, ensuring the children revisit Christian themes, other faiths and worldviews, in order to build on previous knowledge of them.
Our vision, values (chosen by staff, parents, governors and local clergy), assemblies, Collective Worship and links with our local church, all strengthen and support our Christian ethos and Religious Education curriculum.
The Religious Education curriculum is designed to be challenging, thought-provoking, dynamic and relevant to the children’s needs. The children develop knowledge, skills and attitudes to learning about and learning from, religion and worldviews.
The ability to engage in meaningful, open and honest dialogue is a life skill and our curriculum is designed to encourage everyone to ask and answer questions (both teacher and child initiated), to discuss, debate, pause and reflect and respond to a variety of stimuli (quotations, text or story, art, film, music, artefacts, the natural world, visits to places of worship, visiting speakers, assemblies and so on). The children’s responses to a given stimulus may be written, drawn, musical or dramatic or simply silence, in wonder and awe.
Impact
The children develop a deep understanding of the meaning and significance of core theological concepts within Christian belief and practice. They are able to reflect upon and evaluate different ways of understanding the world.
The children respond to a Religious Education curriculum that provides opportunities for spiritual development curriculum (in conjunction with other curriculum subjects). Spiritual development, is not necessarily defined as religious in nature, nor is it necessarily about following a particular set of religious beliefs. However, an individual child’s response might form the beginnings of, or a deepening of, a relationship with God (sometimes defined as developing spiritually).
For some children, the work they do in Religious Education, is the sensitive, safe space they need in order to ask, discuss, doubt and question faith, belief and practice. Some of the pedagogies we employ, such as reflection time or creative responses, have a dual purpose; strengthening mental health as well as time to pause and reflect on their relationship with God or the world in general.
Children use the values, skills and attitudes that they have learned to work and socialise peacefully and happily alongside those of faith, of a different faith and no faith. The children are able to demonstrate their ability to transfer reading, writing and numeracy skills, as well as creative skills. At a deeper, subject level, they are religiously literate, able to understand and articulate, an informed response to the nature and impact of religions and beliefs today.