Religious Education

Our RE curriculum follows the Religious Education Directory, 'To know you more clearly'. The outcome of this document and religious education is to nurture 'religiously literate and consciously engaged young people who have the knowledge, understanding and skills - appropriate to their age and capacity - to reflect spiritually, and think ethically and theologically, and who recognise the demands of religious commitment in everyday life.' (RED). Interwoven with our RE curriculum (developed by using the RED) are our philosophical concepts, which are framed around an enquiry question. These concepts allow teachers and pupils to connect their religious education to the wider curriculum. 

Each half term is a Branch of learning and this is the same for all year groups. This is from the RED:

1. Creation and covenant: ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God’ (Ps 19:1). In this branch, pupils will encounter the God who creates and calls a people. They will explore revelation of the Christian belief that all that is comes from God, the Creation accounts in Genesis, and scientific explanations of the process of Creation. They will explore the call of God and his covenantal relationship with his people first through Abraham and Moses, then through the narrative of the Old Testament.

2. Prophecy and promise: ‘In many and various ways, God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets’ (Heb 1:1). The prophets speak of God reaching to his people, calling them back into a relationship with him. In this branch, pupils will explore the Christian understanding of the teaching of the prophets as they point to the fulfilment of God’s promise in a messiah, Jesus Christ. They will explore the expectant waiting for the Messiah through the Advent season and how this speaks to Christians today as they wait for Christ. Pupils will encounter the story of the nativity of Jesus and the mystery of the incarnation.

3. Galilee to Jerusalem: ‘God’s only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known’ (Jn 1:18). In this branch, pupils will experience the ministry of Jesus, the Word of God. They will learn about the life of Jesus and his revelation of the Kingdom of God through parables, encounters, miracles, and teachings. They will learn about the call of the disciples and the nature of being a follower of Jesus.

4. Desert to garden: ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day’ (1 Cor 15:3). In this branch, pupils will study the season of Lent and its culmination in the events of Holy Week. They will learn about the Paschal Triduum at the heart of the Catholic Church’s Liturgy and life. The title of this branch points both to the liturgical journey from the desert of Lent to the garden of Resurrection, but also to the Paschal journey from darkness to light, barrenness to fruitfulness, death to life.

5. To the ends of the Earth: ‘Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Mt 28:19). In this branch, pupils will study the events that flowed from the Resurrection and Ascension in the coming of the Holy Spirit and the work of the apostles and early Church. They will also learn about the Catholic Church today as the apostolic Church and how its liturgy and structures flow from the early Church.

6. Dialogue and encounter: ‘For “In him we live and move and have our being”’ (Acts 17:28). In this branch, pupils will learn how Christians work together with people of different religious convictions and all people of goodwill towards the common good, respecting the dignity of all humanity. They will also encounter other pathways of belief drawing on the teaching of the Church about intercultural dialogue.

Each Branch includes three elements which make up the model curriculum: knowledge lenses (hear, believe, celebrate, live), Ways of Knowing (skills - understand, discern, respond) and the expected outcomes.

This is what the RED summarises these three elements as:

Knowledge lenses set out the object of study for pupils; they indicate what should be known by the end of each age-phase. They are referred to as lenses, since they are the things we are looking at and they divide the content of the programme of study into four systematic subsections for the study of Catholicism and two additional lenses for the study of religions and worldviews, which together comprise the six knowledge lenses of hear, believe, celebrate, and live (the study of the Catholic religion), dialogue, and encounter (the study of other religions and worldviews).

Ways of knowing set out the skills that pupils should be developing as they progress through their curriculum journey. Whenever we know something, we always know it in more than one way: we remember it, we critically assimilate it, and we put it into practice. All three are ways of coming to know the things that are the object of our study. The ways of knowing are an evolution of the Age-related Standards in Religious Education, which were themselves an evolution of the Levels of Attainment in Religious Education. The three ways of knowing are: understand, discern, and respond. They are represented in the programme of study by icons: head (understand), heart (discern), and hands (respond).

Expected outcomes are a synthesis of the content outlined in the knowledge lenses and the skills described in the ways of knowing. Each age-phase will have a prescribed set of outcomes that will indicate what pupils are expected to know, remember, and be able to do, using the language of the ways of knowing and applying it to the discrete knowledge within each lens