Teaching of Religious Education
Rationale of Religious Education
The primary purpose of Catholic Religious Education is to come to know and understand God’s revelation which is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. This revelation is known through the scriptures and the tradition of the Church as taught by the Magisterium. Religious Education helps the pupil to know and experience the meaning of this revelation in his or her own life and the life of the community which is the Church. Religious Education is the 'core of the core curriculum' in a Catholic school and is planned, taught, assessed and monitored with the same rigour as other core curriculum subjects. It is at the heart of our whole curriculum and is taught for 10% curriculum time within a broad and balanced curriculum. It informs every aspect of the curriculum.
The Aims of Religious Education are:
- To engage in a systematic study of the mystery of God, of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, the teachings of the Church, the central beliefs Catholics hold, the basis for them and the relationship between faith and life;
- to enable pupils continually to deepen their religious and theological understanding and be able to communicate this effectively;
- to present an authentic vision of the Church's moral and social teaching to provide pupils with a sure guide for living and the tools to critically engage with contemporary culture and society;
- to give pupils an understanding of the religions and worldviews present in the world today and the skills to engage in respectful and fruitful dialogue with those whose worldviews differ from their own;
- to develop the critical faculties of pupils so to bring clarity to the relationship between faith and life, and between faith and culture;
- to stimulate pupils' imagination and provoke a desire for personal meaning as revealed in the truth of the Catholic faith;
- to enable pupils to relate the knowledge gained through religious education to their understanding of other subjects in the curriculum
New - ‘Religious Education Directory’ (RED) – ‘To know you more clearly'.
A new RED was published in 2023 and we are currently working on implementing and embedding the RE curriculum in light of this new guidance. We are following the RED curriculum in EYFS, Years 1, 2, 5 and 6 throughout the 2024-2025 academic year. The curriculum will be implemented in Years 3 and 4 from September 2025.
The Diocese of Arundel and Brighton have provided training on a termly basis for all teachers beginning to implement the new RED curriculum. This has focused on the formation of teachers and the content of the curriculum to be taught with opportunities for the sharing of planning and the study of appropriate resources.
The Directory has a framework with 4 structural elements: knowledge lenses, ways of knowing, expected outcomes and curriculum branches.
Knowledge lenses:
Hear, Believe, Celebrate, Live, Dialogue and Encounter. This knowledge is what the children need to learn in order to understand the Catholic religion and to be able to integrate faith and life.
Ways of knowing:
This describes the skills that pupils develop as they progress through the RE curriculum. The three ways of knowing are ‘understand’, ‘discern’, and ‘respond’. The driver words and skills for each of these are split into differing age groups. Two examples are given below:
Expected outcomes:
These 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 expected 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. The school will assess pupil progress against these expected outcomes.
'The outcome of Religious Education is 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, ‘To know you more clearly')`
Curriculum Branches:
The curriculum has 6 components (branches) that map across the 6 terms within the school year. Each has a core theme and invites pupils to learn about an aspect of Revelation, Scripture, life in Christ and life in the Church and then to discern what their learning means academically and experientially enabling them to see, judge and act through a deeper knowledge of the Christian faith.
The spiral structure of the curriculum enables a build-up, layering a critical dimension each year, deepening the pupils’ understanding of the story of salvation, developing a common language and exploring the ‘memory of the Church’ and her teachings and how these have formed part of the history of ideas in the development of humanity. The structure invites teachers to expose students to the beauty of Catholic Christianity and its shaping influence on culture through art, music, literature, science and architecture historically and to the present day equipping young people to dialogue with the beliefs and vision of the Church. Examples of Curriculum Branch content are given below: