RE

Religious education is important because, like every other subject it provides a particular set of materials through which pupils come to understand important things about the world and themselves. We believe that all children should receive RE teaching that is an exploration of the influence of religions and beliefs on individuals, culture, behaviour and national life. 

We believe it is every pupil’s entitlement to have access to the key concepts underpinning religions and beliefs and that personal beliefs of the teacher and pupils are irrelevant. 

We support and use the ‘Southwark Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education 2018’ for the teaching of RE in our school. Good RE brings together the processes of learning about and expressing and deploying skills around the study of religion and world views. We have broken this down into the following three areas:- 

The process of knowing about and understanding religion and world views: 

• focuses on those strands or aspects of religion and human experience that seeks to understand beliefs, teaching and sources, practices and ways of life and forms of expression; 

• consists of more than information-gathering in that it includes identifying the underlying concepts and themes; 

• enables pupils to engage with the material through developing a range of identifiable skills.

The process of expressing and communicating ideas about religion and world views: 

• encourages pupils to make links between their learning and their own personal experiences through identity and belonging, meaning, purpose and truth and values and commitments; 

• enables pupils to develop their thinking about their own and others’ experiences so that they are enabled to develop in their thinking about their own experiences in life, as they compare their experiences with those of others; 

• encourages pupils to express their responses in a range of forms and styles (representational, symbolic etc); • encourages pupils to be sensitive to a range of human responses that might differ from their own. 

The process of gaining and deploying skills needed for the study of religion and world views:

• encourages pupils to use higher order skills in their work and think creatively and deeply about religion and world views;

• enables pupils to make links between other areas of the curriculum.