Developing a secure understanding of faith and cultural diversity 

RE enables pupils’ positive and engaged attitudes towards faith and cultural diversity. It contributes well to the school’s inclusive nature and to challenging prejudices and promotes challenging questions about the meaning and purpose of life, whilst encouraging Christian values to be embedded within their day to day life. This results in pupils that can respectfully and confidently discuss religious, theological, philosophical and moral issues with understanding and thoughtfulness. 

Our curriculum for RE is based upon the units contained within the locally agreed syllabus for Calderdale, Kirklees and Leeds 2019-2024. This is supplemented with Understanding Christianity units.

Children also have the opportunity to study the following faiths;

• Islam
• Judaism
• Hinduism
• Buddhism
• Sikhism

In line with other foundation subjects, we teach RE weekly as we believe this enables pupils to recap and review their learning regularly and allows application to their everyday life; it helps embed concepts in their long-term memory and enables them to apply new knowledge, skills and understanding.

The syllabus requires schools to focus on specific core religions at each Key Stage:

• EYFS – Pupils should encounter religions and other world views through special people, times, place books, and objects. They should listen to and talk about stories from a range of different religions and world views. Material should be drawn from Christianity and at least one other religion’s tradition.

Here, the children will also focus on gaining a knowledge and understanding of not only themselves and their close families but also the world around them.

• KS1 – Children should have a main focus on Christianity and Islam at KS1.

Here, the children will also begin to ask their own questions and form their opinions including on moral questions, for example, what is right and wrong.

• KS2 - Sikhism and Judaism should be studied in greater depth at KS2

Here, children will also deepen their knowledge of religion at local, national and global levels as well as non-religious views.

We recognise the need to embed learning by revisiting and recalling previously learned knowledge. To achieve this, we use Knowledge Organisers detailing the links to previous learning, the key vocabulary and the sticky knowledge that we wish them to gain during that unit. The Knowledge Organisers are referred to throughout the topic teaching.