Religious Education Curriculum Statement
Religious Education Offer
Pupils at Captain Webb Primary School are empowered to develop the hope and perseverance necessary to engage the challenges of learning in the context of school and the wider world.
• Children are challenged to ask questions about the world around them and to seek the solutions, finding answers themselves.
• We prepare pupils to be informed, respectful members of society who celebrate diversity and strive to understand others.
• Teachers engage children with exciting lessons to ensure they access the RE curriculum and enjoy learning about different worldviews.
• Children are encouraged to work together to deepen their knowledge of the beliefs and practices of religions and worldviews.
• Children develop informed opinions and an awareness of the implications of religious beliefs and worldviews on individuals, the community and the environment.
• Children are able to persevere when introduced to different ideas and opinions.
Teaching staff seek out every opportunity to ensure that all pupils flourish in RE lessons, developing wisdom and creativity through an ambitious and broad curriculum that challenges expectations, deepens knowledge and develops skills.
At Captain Webb Primary School we aim to support pupils so that they become independent and responsible members of society who understand and explore big questions about life, to find out what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live, so they can make sense of their own lives and those of others.
We follow the Telford and Wrekin Agreed Syllabus, SACRE (2021), for the teaching of RE. The syllabus aims:
• To stimulate interest and enjoyment in Religious Education.
• To prepare pupils to be informed, respectful members of society who celebrate diversity and strive to understand others.
• To encourage students to develop knowledge of the beliefs and practices of religions and worldviews, to develop informed opinions and an awareness of the implications of religion and worldviews for the individual, the community and the environment.
• To enable pupils to consider their own responses to questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
Knowledge forms the basis for progress in RE. The Telford and Wrekin Agreed Syllabus considers two types of knowledge: substantive (the what) and disciplinary (the how) knowledge. In terms of substantive knowledge, the development of such is reflected through the curriculum units where a religion is revisited and different questions are asked/ knowledge provided as pupils move through school. With regards to disciplinary knowledge in RE we think about the methods (the ways children find out about religion) and the personal disciplinary knowledge, which relates to how the study of religion helps pupils to learn about themselves and their values.
Our chosen curriculum enables the children to draw and revisit prior knowledge, through regular retrieval practices and consider the more complex ideas about religion, where knowledge is connected through concepts and part of the children’s long term memory. Four concepts have been identified as Golden thread concepts/words that weave through our whole curriculum enabling links to be made with other more complex concepts/words over time. The Golden Thread Concepts are ‘belief, relationships, worship and identity’. They are all concepts that are revisited as children progress through the school.
RE lessons at Captain Webb are inclusive, so everyone is valued and respected – and tolerance and diversity are celebrated.
• Children with SEND/EAL children are given appropriate support to access the RE curriculum and can respond in different ways.
• All pupils are encouraged to consider their own values and attitudes and those of others, and provided knowledge and opportunities to understand other people.
• Scaffolds, sentence stems etc. are used to alleviate boundaries so that each child can access the main religious concepts.
• Lessons are pitched appropriately to ensure children are able to access the RE curriculum.
• Assessment is completed in an appropriate way for each child so that they are able to demonstrate their understanding.
• An understanding of pupils’ needs is demonstrated through the range of ways in which the pupils can achieve the lesson objective
SMSC and Religious Education.
It is our aim that Religious Education should contribute to the spiritual, moral and social and cultural development of our pupils. Religious Education can help children develop their own informed values, religious and non-religious. Children should learn to respect themselves and be sensitive to the needs and experiences of others, including considering the effect our actions have upon others. Religious Education can also help develop pupils’ understanding of social issues like stewardship of the Earth’s resources, our citizenship within local, national and global communities and a genuine respect for persons and sensitivity to their values and beliefs. Religious Education should also equip pupils to challenge inequalities and disadvantages associated with race, gender, class and ability.
RE Policy
RE Knowledge Progression Grid
RE Schema for Worship
RE Schema for Relationships
RE Schema for Identity
RE Schema for Belief
Parental right of withdrawal from RE
This was first granted in 1944 when curricular RE was called ‘Religious Instruction’ and carried with it connotations of induction into the Christian faith. RE is very different now – open, broad and exploring a range of religious and non-religious worldviews. In the UK, parents still have the right to withdraw their children from RE on the grounds that they wish to provide their own RE. This provision will be the parents’ responsibility.6 This right of withdrawal exists for all pupils in all types of school, including schools with and without a religious designation. Students aged 18 or over have the right to withdraw themselves from RE. Parents also have the right to withdraw their child from part of RE, and can do so without giving any explanation.