RE Intent

Our RE curriculum at Park House is based on the Derbyshire and Derby City Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education (2020-2025). It provides the legal framework for a syllabus for Religious Education for Derby City and Derbyshire schools.  We agree with the aims within the syllabus and all of our RE lessons follow the broad aims:

• To encourage pupils to explore questions of spirituality, identity, ethics, discrimination and prejudice.
• To enable pupils to develop an understanding of what it means to be a person of faith or no faith.
• To encourage pupils to articulate their own ideas about religion, belief and spirituality.
• To experience RE as an exciting subject that feeds into an understanding of what it means to live in Derbyshire and Derby City and our wider world
• To promote the endorsement of fundamental British Values, so that schools will be supported in visiting places of worship, community meeting places and communicating with different social groups across the local community.

(Based on Derbyshire and Derby City Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education (2020-2025))

We feel that to do all of these things the children need to have confidence in themselves and the belief that what they have to say is important.  Alongside this is the importance of listening to other people’s viewpoints and recognising the importance of them to others without feeling it must be followed,  We believe these are life skills for children especially in today’s modern world.

Although spiritual, moral, social and cultural development (SMSC) is at the heart of all of our teaching, we do recognise that RE lessons offer more opportunity to develop children’s SMSC development than other subjects. 

We ensure our curriculum is sequenced from Early Years through to Key Stage Two as we have based our overview on the units of study in the syllabus.  Our units are based on the key questions in the syllabus which are all covered throughout school.   Each unit begins by listing the units from other years that are in the same thread.  The three main threads are believing(beliefs, teaching and questions), expressing (forms of expressions, identity and diversity), living (religious practices and ways of living).  By knowing which units have gone before and which are coming next we can, as teachers, ensure the vocabulary being used is appropriate and what is reinforcement and where the thread is going next.  These three threads are covered in all year groups in at least one unit. 

We believe every pupil can achieve and benefit from RE lessons whatever their ability.  RE is a statutory part of the core curriculum for all pupils, including those with learning difficulties.  Good RE lessons include a multi sensory approach (e.g. through story, music, calm and peaceful space) and is based on individual beliefs and communities of believers.  RE can enable pupils with the most complex of needs to develop awareness of themselves, their feelings, their emotions and their senses.  It can also can enable pupils to develop their relationships with other people and their understanding of other people’s needs.

RE implementation

We strongly believe that RE as a subject is a key part of a child’s education as when taught well it encourages key life skills such as identity, belonging, diversity, empathy, questioning, etc.  These skills can then be transferred across all areas of the curriculum as well as throughout life.  This is a passion I have as RE coordinator but also share with other members of staff through staff meetings, overview of the curriculum, support with planning, informal chats. 

We follow the Derbyshire and Derby agreed syllabus for RE 2020-2025, and have purchased the plans produced by RE Today Services.  These are based on key questions which all come under the three strands of Believing, Expressing and Living.  The syllabus allows flexibility in RE provision and allows schools to decide how RE should be delivered, whilst ensuring that there is continuity and progression in learning across key stages.

Where possible, we teach RE within cross curricular topics which bring together a number of subject areas.  However to ensure all objectives of the agreed syllabus are met this is not always possible so then we would timetable RE as a separate subject. 

Progression and continuity is the development of knowledge and understanding, skills, concepts and attitudes in a key stage and in relation to previous and subsequent key stages. It is achieved through building on earlier learning. It is not just about accumulation of knowledge but concerns a developing ability to deepen understanding by making use of reflective, interpretative and evaluative skills. Pupils should increasingly be challenged to discover the underlying messages of the teaching behind religious traditions, stories, artefacts and ceremonies.

(From Derbyshire and Derby City Agreed Syllabus for RE 2020-2025)

Progression and continuity is achieved at Park House as our planning started from the agreed syllabus and plans produced by RE Today, who had a key role in developing the syllabus.  We then met as a staff to decide on a school overview, looking at class topics, times of the year and most importantly the progression of knowledge, skills and understanding. 

As well as the syllabus being based around three key strands, the key questions ensure continuity and deepening understanding.  The questions looked at in Foundation stage are all based around the idea of discovering, in KS1 the questions are based around the idea of exploring, at Lower KS2 connecting and the Upper KS2 questions, connecting. 

Planned opportunities are given to each year group for children to convey what they know already as well as what they would like to investigate and find out. This informs the planning and ensures that lessons are relevant and take account of children’s different starting points.  In Reception this is done through Persona Dolls who represent children from different faith communities and who are an important part of our RE lessons. Children are given the opportunity to practise skills in a variety of ways and each lesson builds upon the previous skills, allowing them time to embed it. Different skills are recapped throughout and across the years, each time they are being built upon; allowing children to know more and remember more.

Throughout the year a large proportion of whole school assemblies include key RE principals and when visitors are allowed in school, we have assemblies led by the local vicar.

The class teacher records the assessments on the school’s foundation subject assessment sheet at the end of each term.  This is done in 3 columns, emerging, expected, exceeding and therefore does not create unnecessary workload for staff. This data is passed through school to inform planning and support children appropriately.  These are based on the learning outcomes from the syllabus and take into account the religious knowledge and skills which the child has acquired over a period of time.

At Park House we aim for our children to encounter religions and worldviews through special people, books, times, places and objects, by visiting places of worship and through stories. They are encouraged to use all of their senses to explore beliefs, practices and forms of expression. They ask questions and reflect on their own feelings and experiences. They use their imagination and curiosity to develop their appreciation of and wonder at the world in which they live.  We develop these skills from FS2 through to Y6.  All of the units in the scheme include a variety of the above and teachers select the most appropriate for their children.

The EYFS units are based on the characteristics of learning as well as the early learning goals, especially PSED and UTW.

The primary objective of applying key literacy and numeracy conventions to RE is to enable our pupils to achieve more and better in RE. To this end we ensure that high standards of literacy and numeracy are applied to RE whilst not letting these be a barrier to children’s RE.

RE impact

By the time our pupils leave Y6 they will have:

• a knowledge and understanding of religions and beliefs, predominantly Christianity as well as other world religions and secular views
• developed a religious vocabulary and interpret religious symbolism in a variety of forms
• had the opportunity to reflect on questions of meaning
• had the opportunity to offer their own thoughtful and informed insights into religious and secular world-views
• had the opportunity to explore ultimate questions of beliefs and values in relation to a range of contemporary issues in an ever-changing society

Outcomes in RE books, where appropriate, evidence a broad and balanced RE curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge.  Children review the agreed successes at the end of every session which are based on the learning outcomes that relate to the end of key stage outcomes. 

D2 A progression overview: outcomes

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods;

• Learning walks and professional dialogue with teachers.
• Accessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the ‘knowledge and skills’ have been taught.
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning
• Interviewing pupils about their learning (pupil voice)
• Moderation staff meetings
• The attitudes of the children