RE

Intent

Our broad and balanced whole school curriculum, including our RE curriculum, is designed around our school values of Trust, Forgiveness, Creation, Hope, Endurance and Compassion and our mission statement:

‘Learn, Grow and Achieve together in God’s love’

At Eastergate C of E Primary School, we believe that the teaching of Religious Education is vital for the development of each pupil, as an individual. Religious Education contributes to the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of all pupils and their understanding of life in modern Britain. It is an important part of a pupil’s education, enabling them to reflect on their own beliefs, values and opinions and those of others.

We use the Understanding Christianity Scheme combined with the Emmanuel Project Scheme that covers other faiths. It is coherently planned and sequenced to include a mixture of Christianity and world religions (Islam, Judaism and Hinduism). As a school, we have adopted an enquiry- based approach, which explores key concepts or beliefs in each religion and the stories, practices and rituals which arise from them. Learning journeys in RE build on pupil’s prior knowledge and understanding, promoting respect, empathy for others and opportunities for personal reflection.

In the Enquiry Cycle, pupils engage with concepts in an exciting way, making links with their own experiences of life. They develop questions to help them enquire into religious belief and practice and explore these in different ways. They evaluate their work to see if they have a secure understanding of the belief / concept and then express their learning for another audience.

Implementation

In accordance with the West Sussex agreed syllabus, the expectation is that a minimum of 5% of curriculum time should be allocated to RE at Eastergate CE Primary School. This will largely be fulfilled through allocating 1 hour per week in EYFS and KS1 and 1 hour 15 minutes hours per week in KS2, this may be flexible to allow for learning to be blocked.

Christianity is taught primarily through the Understanding Christianity. The content of RE follows the legal requirement to reflect the fact that the religious traditions of the UK are, in the main, Christian.

The syllabus should ‘reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian, while taking account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain.’ (s375 (3) Education Act 1996)

Reflecting our school’s foundation, Christianity is the majority religion studied in each year group and comprises at least 50% of curriculum time in each academic year. Sufficient dedicated curriculum time, meeting explicitly RE objectives, is organised according to the Understanding Christianity units and equates to the greater part of our curriculum time.

Other faiths are taught through the Emmanuel project resource. The other faiths that we look at are Judaism, Islam and Hinduism.

The Understanding Christianity resource provides the building blocks of key Christian concepts which develop children’s understanding of the Christian faith from Reception to Year 6. These concepts are taught within the ‘big picture’ of the bible to give children a broad understanding of our national faith. In addition, other key faiths are taught through The Emmanuel Project resource which is similar in its learning style and content. Learning activities provide for the needs of all pupils, so that they develop a wide range of skills including enquiry, analysis, interpretation, evaluation and reflection. RE lessons provide a safe space for pupils to explore their own religious, spiritual and/or philosophical ways of seeing, living and thinking, believing and belonging. They provide opportunities to engage in meaningful and informed dialogue with those of all religions and worldviews.

We teach RE to all pupils, and adapt teaching to meet individual needs. RE forms part of our commitment to provide a broad, balanced and inspirational education for all pupils. Through our RE teaching we provide learning opportunities that enable all pupils to make progress and work hard to meet the needs of all our pupils.