At our school, we recognise the importance of RE in every aspect of daily life.

RE explores big questions about life, to find out what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live, so that pupils can make sense of religion, reflecting on their own ideas and ways of living.  Our aim 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.

Our RE teaching offers opportunities for children to:

• understand religious and belief systems͛ commitment to morality and social justice, to responsible stewardship of the environment and to deepening the experience of being human.
• Promoting social and ethnic harmony and awareness of British values through the exploration of multiple identities and local communities, through visits to places of worship and meeting people from religious and belief communities, and through a deepening understanding of beliefs and practices, our aim is for young people to come to an informed and empathetic understanding of different groups which will help promote cohesion and integration. Pupils will explore British values in relation to religions and beliefs.
• ensure high standards of achievement, learning and behaviour for all our pupils, as well as contributing to their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Our children have weekly lessons in RE throughout Key Stage 1 and 2. In Early years, RE is taught through the children learning about the world around them in their learning through play and through stories, dance, drama etc. Additional opportunities are provided in RE, such as visits to places of worship, Open the Book – lead by members of the local clergy and messy fiestas.  We endeavour to ensure that the RE curriculum we provide will give children the confidence and motivation to continue to further develop their skills into the next stage of their education and life experiences whilst becoming well informed citizens of the multi- cultural diverse world in which they live.

Implementation

Teachers create a positive attitude to RE learning within their classrooms and reinforce an expectation that all children are capable of achieving high standards. RE is taught consistently throughout the year so that children achieve depth in their learning. Teachers have identified the key knowledge and skills of each unit and consideration has been given to ensure progression across all units throughout each phase. 

These are some of the key skills that are developed through our knowledge-based curriculum:

• Religious enquiry, where children will learn to ask relevant and informed questions that encourage deeper thinking.
• Religious understanding, where children will look at the context of events and explore in depth the way people celebrate and worship through key events and people.
• Reflection, where children are able to reflect, discuss and develop their deeper thinking.
• Celebrating diversity where children learn that we live in a diverse world in which different cultures and religions are recognised and celebrated. 
• Communication. where children are taught to use religious terminology to confidently articulate and share religious ideas, views and opinions.

Planning is informed by and aligned with both the Leicestershire syllabus, and Understanding Christianity. Children will be taught in a range of ways including multi-faith trips, stories, visitors, songs, drama, puppetry, dance, literature and exploration of artefacts.

Consideration is given to how all learners will be ensured access to the curriculum at a suitably challenging level. Therefore making learning accessible for children with specific needs or extending those working at greater depth.  Outcomes of work are regularly monitored to ensure that teaching is effective and it reflects a sound understanding of each unit.

 Through our planning we make space for all of our children to explore their own beliefs, values and traditions, and those of others, in engaged and engaging ways. We aim to support children to develop positive attitudes of respect towards people from all religions and worldviews. We are committed to providing the teaching of RE in a manner that is coherent, progressive, pedagogically and philosophically sound, and that will promote the cognitive, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of all learners. We aim to help them become literate and articulate about religions and beliefs, and to be thoughtful members of a plural society, so that in learning from religion they are able to make informed choices about how they want to live their lives whilst also understanding more about the faith of other people they meet.

We provide opportunities for them to raise questions of spirituality and identity as well as questions of morality, such as poverty, discrimination and the use of limited resources as well as raising ethical questions about human reproduction, racial and religious prejudice and the role of politics in everyday life. They discover, explore and consider many different answers to questions about human identity, meaning and value. They learn to weigh up for themselves the value of wisdom from different communities, to disagree respectfully, to be reasonable in their responses to religions and world views and to respond by expressing insights into their own and others’͛ lives.  They think rigorously, creatively, imaginatively and respectfully about their ideas in relation to religions and world views.

Impact

The approach across our school is to provide a fun, engaging and high-quality RE education rooted in our Christian ethos. We provide rich opportunities to explore a range of faiths and religions, whilst developing children’s personal ability to form their own opinions of the world around them, guided by our Christian Values. Our engagement with the church and the wider community ensures that children learn through first hand experiences. So much of RE lends itself to reflective thinking, so we provide a range of opportunities within lessons to explore this with the children through key questioning, artwork, drama and song. Through various trips, visitors and charities, our children are able to reflect on our diverse community and a range of religious beliefs extending from the children’s own community to the world as a whole.

We have designed our RE curriculum to show progression ensuring  that every child has the opportunity to achieve and to build upon their prior skills and knowledge. Through our marking, feedback and assessments we are able to monitor and track the progress of each child. The teachers provide children with regular opportunities for retrieval practice where they can recall, use and build on their prior learning.