Our Vision for Religious Education

At Christ Church Primary School, we teach according to the Worcester Agreed Syllabus and consider R.E. to be a core subject. R.E. is taught weekly in both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. R.E. is taught with academic rigour with the teaching of Christianity as a living and diverse faith, focused on the teaching of Jesus and the Church, at the heart. As an inclusive learning community, we also learn about other world religions and world views (predominately Islam and Judaism, with Hinduism and Sikhism as subsidiary areas), fostering respect for them and the diversity of religious experience worldwide.

Our Aims

We follow the Church of England’s Vision for Education, striving for transformational outcomes for pupils by combining academic rigour with a rounded approach to personal development and R.E. teaching and learning across the curriculum.  We aim to bring life in all its fullness by:

Educating for Wisdom, Knowledge and Skills

• We aim for pupils to flourish academically through the provision of high-quality R.E, to foster confidence, delight and discipline in seeking wisdom and knowledge through R.E. lessons.

• Pupils acquire a rich, deep knowledge and understanding of Christian belief and practice and engage in meaningful and informed dialogue to explore a range of religions and world views.

• Pupils develop a wide range of skills including enquiry, analysis, interpretation, evaluation and reflection. Children have space to explore their own religious, spiritual and/or philosophical ways of seeing, living and thinking, believing and belonging.

• Challenge and depth of thinking are present in every R.E. lesson, ensuring progress in emotional intelligence and academic skills.

Educating for Hope and Aspiration

• We aim for pupils to become religiously literate through teaching a full curriculum that prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life in modern Britain.

• Our R.E. Curriculum Plan demonstrates our rich and varied curriculum and the balance between theology, philosophy and social and human sciences.

Educating for Community and Living Well Together

• Through rigorous planning and a focus on progression, pupils are provided with a wide range of learning opportunities to gain knowledge and understanding of a range of religious and worldviews appreciating diversity, continuity and change.

Educating for Dignity and Respect

• Pupils will engage with challenging questions of meaning and purpose raised by human existence and experience recognising the concept of religion and its continuing influence on Britain’s cultural heritage and in the lives of individuals and societies in different times, cultures and places.

Our R.E Curriculum

We use two resources to deliver the R.E. Curriculum in school:

• Worcester Agreed Syllabus
• Understanding Christianity

Worcester Agreed Syllabus

This syllabus is designed to support schools in developing and delivering excellence in R.E.. It responds to national calls for deepening pupils’ knowledge about religions and for developing their ‘religious literacy’.

Understanding Christianity

The resource ‘Understanding Christianity’ is used to support the teaching and learning of Christianity, integrating pupils’ developing theological understanding with their own self-understanding of the world.  Units of work address a key Christian concept through key questions and exploration of key biblical texts, the impact that they have on Christians and possible implications for the children themselves. Each unit incorporates the elements of:

• Making Sense of the Text: Developing skills of interpretation; understanding how Christians interpret, handle and use biblical texts; making sense of meanings of texts for Christians.
• Making Connections: Examining different ways in which Christians respond to biblical texts and teachings, and how they put their beliefs into action in diverse ways within the Christian community and in the world.
• Understanding the Impact: Evaluating, reflecting on and connecting the texts and concepts studied and discerning possible connections between these and pupils' own lives and ways of understanding the world.

The main Christian concepts explored through Understanding Christianity are God, Creation/The Fall, People of God, Incarnation, Gospel, Salvation and Kingdom of God. The concepts are taught in a spiral curriculum, whereby concepts are revisited and explored in more depth as pupils move through the school. These are explored through key questions and through connections to other concepts. 

(curriculum map coming soon)

Parents have a legal right to withdraw their children from Religious Education lessons, but as R.E. is central to the life and identity of Christ Church, we would ask parents to discuss with the Headteacher any reasons they might have for doing this.

Developing Literacy through Religious Education

We develop literacy through all areas of our curriculum, including R.E., in the following ways:

• High quality oracy opportunities through debate, discussion, sharing opinions and respectfully challenging others. Asking and answering questions using evidence from a range of texts and other media.
• Using a broad vocabulary in discussions and written work developing children’s vocabulary and understanding.
• Encouraging reading and writing for a range of purposes, engaging in varied texts and writing using different methods of presentation.

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