Intent

The principal aim of RE is to engage pupils in systematic enquiry into significant human questions which religion and worldviews address, so that they can develop the understanding and skills needed to appreciate and appraise varied responses to these questions, as well as develop responses of their own.

Well-being can be interpreted in terms of healthy choices and lifestyles.  However, RE opens the possibility of exploring a deeper understanding of well-being, incorporating spiritual health, a fascination with the world and our place in it, and a resilience to the hardships that life often brings.  

Our RE aims:

• To ensure that every pupil’s statutory entitlement to RE is met, irrespective of their faith or belief, and within this to encourage pupils to explore questions of spirituality, identity, ethics, discrimination and prejudice.
• To enable pupils to develop religious literacy and conceptual understanding of what it means to be a person of faith or no faith.
• To encourage pupils to articulate their own ideas and experience of religion, belief and spirituality.
• To encourage all pupils and teachers to experience RE as an exciting subject that feeds into an understanding of what it means to live in Derbyshire and Derby City and our wider world communities and to promote harmony and good community relations.
• To encourage teachers to produce RE lessons that are challenging, inspiring and engaging to everyone.
• To assist pupils to engage critically with ideas and understanding of religion and belief systems, given the nature of our society, its speed of change and growing social media influences. RE studies how religions and world views shape and are shaped by the societies in which pupils live, promoting deepening understanding of those belief systems.
• To promote interactive, creative and experiential learning that promotes social and ethnic accord alongside the endorsement of fundamental British Values, so that schools will be supported in visiting places of worship, community meeting places and communicating with different social groups across the local community.

Implementation

We follow the Derbyshire Agreed Syllabus (DAS) for RE (2020-2025). Children cover different religions and are given opportunities to explore deeper questions which make us all think, such as, ‘What do religions say to us when life gets hard?

Our yearly RE planning covers the three strands of RE outlined in the DAS ‘believing’, ‘expressing’ and ‘living’.

Given the opportunities for encountering people of different beliefs and lifestyles, RE also has a key role to play in fostering respect and social cohesion.  As well as being “religiously educated”, RE helps pupils to become “skilled cultural navigators”, able to handle the differences of faith and belief around them, as well as establish their own sense of identity and belonging. During key stage two, pupils should be taught knowledge, skills and understanding through learning about Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jewish people. Pupils may also encounter other religions and worldviews in thematic units.

The DAS curriculum for RE aims to ensure that all pupils:

1. Know about and understand a range of religions and worldviews, so that they can:

• describe, explain and analyse beliefs and practices, recognising the diversity which exists within and between communities and amongst individuals

• identify, investigate and respond to questions posed, and responses, offered by some of the sources of wisdom found in religions and worldviews

• appreciate and appraise the nature, significance and impact of different ways of life and ways of expressing meaning.

2. Express ideas and insights about the nature, significance and impact of religions and worldviews, so that they can:

• explain reasonably their ideas about how beliefs, practices and forms of expression influence

individuals and communities

• express with increasing discernment their personal reflections and critical responses to questions

and teachings about identity, diversity, meaning and value, including ethical issues

• appreciate and appraise varied dimensions of religion.

3. Gain and deploy the skills needed to engage seriously with religions and worldviews, so that they can:

• find out about and investigate key concepts and questions of belonging, meaning, purpose and

truth, responding creatively

• enquire into what enables different individuals and communities to live together respectfully for

the wellbeing of all

• articulate beliefs, values and commitments clearly in order to explain why they may be important in their own and other people’s lives.