Intent 

As a church school, R.E. has a unique place at the heart of our curriculum. Our twelve school values underpin each R. E. topic and are drawn from the Bible. Everything we do is rooted in the core Christian beliefs of love for God and love for neighbour. St John's believes that religious education should enable every child to flourish and to live life in all its fullness. (John 10:10) and as such, offers a rich and full curriculum that prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life in modern Britain.

St John’s school serves families from other faiths. The religious education received allows all to be true to their underpinning faith, but hold a deep respect for the integrity of other religious traditions (and worldviews) and for the religious freedom of each person. In doing so we have an opportunity to contribute positively to the development of a society where faith helps individuals to understand one another and live well together.

Through R.E, we help our children to: 

• develop into respectful and compassionate people with a growing knowledge and understanding of the main religious beliefs in Great Britain. 

• appreciate the role that faith and belief might have in a person’s life. 

• find similarities and differences between their own faith and the faith of others. 

• support their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Implementation 

The RE curriculum for foundation and key stages 1 and 2 has been adopted from RE today (in association with The National Association of Teachers of Religious Education). The programme provides a broad and balanced set of materials based on both the Birmingham and Solihull agreed syllabi. Parts of the Understanding Christianity Programme are also used to enhance learning experiences. Together, these provide progression and high-quality teaching resources, reflecting a knowledge rich RE experience. The material covers the two attainment targets, learning from religion and learning about religion. Training for staff and planning pathways equip teachers with in-depth subject knowledge. The skill of teaching staff helps to inspire and bring RE content to life. Engaging lessons help children to reflect on issues relevant to our school faith context. Alongside our school values and our distinctive character as a church school, this living curriculum offers experiences that surpass simply delivering a scheme of work. 

Implementation involves:

• opportunities for children to reflect further on the values which have been explored in Collective Worship within R.E. sessions.

• teaching that is engaging and offers the children a variety of experiences to explore their ideas and responses to religion.  

• collaborative learning that promotes community cohesion within the classroom and enables all children to participate in a supportive environment. 

• a focus on exploring vocabulary in appropriate contexts.

• a focus on retrieval and revisiting knowledge to allow it to become embedded in the long term memory.

At St John's we ensure that the RE curriculum is relevant to all pupils and respects their own personal beliefs. However, parents do have the right to withdraw their child, wholly or partly from RE lessons. If parents want to know more about the RE curriculum, we encourage them to come and talk to us so that an informed decision can be made.

Impact 

•  RE is assessed in different ways. Formative assessment involves ongoing teacher judgement about a child’s knowledge and ability to question, reflect and reason and engage with issues raised.
•  Robust summative assessments in line with RE Today allow teachers to identify gaps in knowledge and  take steps to challenge children. They provide children with the chance to reflect on and demonstrate what they have learned.
•  As part of the wider experience of belonging to a church school, children should show knowledge about some significant aspect of Anglican church beliefs and practices, including simple liturgy, the church calendar   and seasons and the importance of the bible.
• Attainment and progress are monitored by the RE Leader, using book scrutiny, pupil discussion and lesson observations. A range of children’s work is kept as evidence. We understand that children develop and make progress at different rates.

Diversity and Global Christianity

Ofsted (2021) suggests “High-quality RE (or Religion and Worldviews) curriculums do not require excessive  

content but … contain collectively enough substantive knowledge to enable pupils to recognise the diverse and changing religious and non-religious traditions of the world.”

 The RE Today programme provides teachers with stimuli to explore non-religious world views (for example     

 some humanist world views) and to challenge existing stereotypes of world faiths, for example, that all  

 Christians look a certain way, believe exactly the same things and are the same race or nationality. As part  

 of networking with the Birmingham Diocesan Board of Education, the school adopts recommended materials  

 and updates regarding teaching content which is more reflective of Christianity around the world. It is our  

 responsibility to help children to become well informed, reflective learners with an understanding of the

religious and non-religious traditions of the world. This also reflects the school’s commitment to tolerance  

 within British Values.

EYFS

Understanding the World

Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.

ELG: People, Culture and Communities

Children at the expected level of development will:

- Describe their immediate environment using knowledge from observation, discussion, stories, non-fiction texts and maps;

- Know some similarities and differences between different religious and cultural communities in this country, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class;

- Explain some similarities and differences between life in this country and life in other countries, drawing on knowledge from stories, non-fiction texts and – when appropriate – maps.

An important part of quality RE teaching and learning is catering for all types of learners. At St John's we carefully consider the needs of all our children as individuals. Open our maps to see how teaching staff reflect on pedagogical structures and strategies to allow all children to experience an exciting and engaging curriculum!