Curriculum
Religious Education
Curriculum intent, implementation, and impact
Religious Education
We believe that it is important for all our pupils to learn from and about religion, so that they can understand the world around them whilst also incorporating our school values: Belong, Respect, Inspire, Succeed and Enjoy. The aim of RE in our school is to help children to acquire and develop knowledge and understanding of Christianity and the other principal religions represented in Great Britain; to appreciate the way that religious beliefs shape life and behaviour, develop the ability to make reasoned and informed judgements about religious and moral issues and enhance their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
We will ensure that our RE curriculum is inclusive of all pupils, including those with SEND and EAL. We will do this through promoting talk in all lessons and providing children with the key vocabulary needed. It is important that every child is given the opportunity to access our RE curriculum offer and to achieve to the best of their ability.
At HLC, we believe that RE is imperative because:
- It helps pupils understand the world they live in by developing their religious literacy.
- It helps them to develop skills in recognising, handling and analysing the big questions and concepts that arise from experience and help make sense of life.
- It provides opportunities for and develops their ability to reflect on experience
- It develops debating, reasoning, self-expression, relationships and self-understanding.
- It helps with their literacy, creativity, personal development and critical thinking.
- It helps their understanding of identity and their search for meaning, purpose and value.
- It helps the school with their ethos and values.
- It helps develop a sense of community and belonging.
- It provides opportunities to build positive relationships for learning and behaviour.
- It helps the children to explore meaning, truth and live by values.
- It allows us to understand and respectfully challenge and be challenged by people of different lifestyles, beliefs and practices.
We follow the Discovery R.E. scheme which adopts an enquiry based approach to teaching and learning. Christianity is taught in every year group alongside one of the other religions: Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism. Humanist perspectives are added when appropriate. Each session has a learning objective which shows the learning over the enquiry and SMSC development opportunities are mapped throughout as is each contribution to the British Values agenda.
The Discovery R.E. syllabus has been created in a recurrent format to enable children to revisit and build on their prior knowledge of the different beliefs and practices taught across the school. The syllabus also allows for teachers to be flexible and adapt the term in which units are taught in their year group, to allow for cross-curricular links or involvement with parents and other members of the community.
At HLC, we are committed to providing our children with an exciting and positive learning environment and fostering respect, understanding, and appreciation for the rich diversity of religious traditions. To achieve this, we provide students with opportunities to visit different places of worship, including Churches, Mosques, Temples, Synagogues, and Gurdwaras. These visits offer invaluable firsthand experiences, allowing students to explore the beliefs, practices, and cultural significance of various faiths. By stepping into sacred spaces and engaging with community members, students gain a deeper, more authentic understanding of religious traditions and their role in society.
This approach not only enriches their learning but also promotes mutual respect, empathy, and interfaith dialogue, preparing students to become open-minded and informed global citizens.
We also seek to ensure that all pupils in our school are educated to develop spiritually, academically, emotionally and morally to enable them to better understand themselves and others and to cope with the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities of living in a rapidly changing, multicultural world.
Impact
At HLC, we are committed to providing our children with an exciting and positive learning environment, in which they have the opportunity to develop their knowledge and understanding of religions. We measure the impact of our curriculum in the following ways:
- Discussion with children shows knowledge and understanding of all 6 religions
- Work in floor portfolios shows clear sequence
- Work in floor portfolios shows progression through religions and year groups
- Evidence of discussion based lessons in evident in books.
- Analysis of data and teacher assessment in RE (half termly).
- Through the use of digital evidence (photographs) that captures educational visits.
- Pupil voice meetings and pupil questionnaires (termly).
- Developing inquisitive minds towards religions around the world.
