Religious Education at Saint Edmund's Catholic Primary
As a Catholic School, we value Religious Education as the "core of the core curriculum" (Pope St John Paul II.)
At the heart of every Catholic school is the person of Jesus Christ and everything that we do is underpinned by the Gospel and our school's vision which is linked to the six key values of:
We follow curriculum guidance from the Catholic Education Service in connection with guidance from Clifton Diocese. We do this through following the ‘God Matters’ scheme and their supplementary guidance. We use Ten:Ten to support the teaching of Relationship, Health and Sex Education and Collective Worship. The Department for Education's guidance for teaching RE in and Academy can be found here.
Our aims of teaching Religious Education
To Know You More Clearly: Mater Admirabilit Monstra Te Esse Matrem
In line with the Religious Education Directory (RED), these are our aims of Religious Education:
1. 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 that Catholics hold, the basis for them, and the relationship between faith and life;
2. to enable pupils continually to deepen their religious and theological understanding and be able to communicate this effectively;
3. 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;
4. 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;
5. to develop the critical faculties of pupils so to bring clarity to the relationship between faith and life, and between faith and culture;
6. to stimulate pupils’ imagination and provoke a desire for personal meaning as revealed in the truth of the Catholic faith;
7. to enable pupils to relate the knowledge gained through religious education to their understanding of other subjects in the curriculum.
How Religious Education is taught at Saint Edmund's
The programme of study for religious education in Catholic schools presented in this directory has a framework with four structural elements: knowledge lenses, ways of knowing, expected outcomes, curriculum branches.
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, 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.
Curriculum branches are the way this programme of study presents its model curriculum. The model curriculum presents the expected outcomes in six curriculum branches that correspond to the six half-terms of a school year. The six curriculum branches are:
Term 1 : Creation and Covenant
Term 2: Prophecy and Promise
Term 3: Galilee to Jerusalem
Term 4: Desert to Garden
Term 5: To the ends of the Earth
Term 6: Dialogue and Encounter; Children learn about Judaism every year and the Islamic faith and Hinduism on alternate years.
Relationships, Health and Sex Education is taught throughout the year with our Catholic faith at the centre of our teaching, this is in line with our PHSE curriculum.
Collective Worship is also a fundamental part of our Religious Education. More details can be found under 'Our School' - 'Our Catholic Faith' at the top of this page.
What do we want children to gain from Religious Education?
We hope children leave Saint Edmund’s as ‘religiously literate and engaged young people who have the knowledge, understanding and skills – appropriate to their age and capacity – to reflect spiritually, and think ethically and theologically,' (Religious Education Curriculum Directory p6). We hope children leave us with secure foundations on which to build a lifelong faith and celebrate their God given talents.