Religious education (RE) should make a major contribution to the education of children and young people. At its best, it is intellectually challenging and personally enriching. It helps young people develop beliefs and values, and promotes the virtues of respect and empathy, which are important in our diverse society. It fosters civilised debate and reasoned argument, and helps pupils to understand the place of religion and belief in the modern world.
Ofsted
Our curriculum leader for RE is Mrs Katie Smith
Intent
At Glusburn School, we want children to explore challenging questions that focus on: meaning and purpose in life, beliefs about God, ultimate reality, issues of right and wrong and what it means to be human.
Implementation
Children experience RE lessons once every fortnight. This allows the children sufficient time to become fluent in their knowledge and skills, and recalls will ensure this is embedded in their long term memory.
We follow North Yorkshire’s ‘Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education’. We introduce knowledge of religions in a thought out sequence of topics that examine beliefs and their impact on the many areas of life; family, worship, customs.
RE is a compulsory part of the curriculum for all Reception age pupils and is taught using the North Yorkshire ‘Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education’.
RE is non-statutory for Nursery age pupils, although teachers may wish to incorporate RE material into children’s activities if they choose to.
Our aim is to engage pupils in systematic enquiry into significant human questions which religions and world views address, so they can develop the understanding and skills needed to appreciate and understand why and how people live as they do and develop responses of their own.
How is RE enabled in the Early Years?
In Early Years RE is taught through the Specific area of Understanding the World: People and communities and is enabled through, for example: providing activities and opportunities for children to share experiences and knowledge from different parts of their lives with each other; providing ways of preserving memories of special events; inviting children and families with experiences of living in other countries to bring in photographs and objects from their home cultures including those from family members living in different areas of the UK and abroad; ensuring the use of modern photographs of parts of the world that are commonly stereotyped and misrepresented; helping children to learn positive attitudes and challenge negative attitudes and stereotypes; visiting different parts of the local community; providing role-play areas with a variety of resources reflecting diversity; making a display with the children, showing all the people who make up the community of the setting; sharing stories that reflect the diversity of children’s experiences; inviting people from a range of cultural backgrounds to talk about aspects of their lives.
Whilst also considering the following questions from the North Yorkshire’s ‘Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education’: Which stories are special and why? Which people are special and why? Which places are special and why? What times are special and why? Being special: where do we belong? What is special about our world?
Reception children receive a weekly R.E. adult taught session.