Rationale 

Through the teaching of RE, our vision is to create knowledgeable, curious, and compassionate children who have the enthusiasm and respect to share their interests in the people, beliefs, and cultures of our world.  We want children to gain an understanding of a variety religions, especially those they may not experience within their communities, to ensure children develop tolerance and respect for all.  

Curriculum Design 

The EYFS curriculum is planned to match the requirements of the EYFS Statutory Framework.  In the area of Understanding of the World, children learn about religion and culture through experiences, visitors and stories.  This is planned through both adult-led learning and continuous provision.  

In KS1 and KS2, the R.E curriculum is based on the relevant national and local requirements set out by the Awareness, Mystery and Values (AMV) Locally Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education in Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and the London Borough of Haringey. 

The learning sequences match the children’s age related interests and create a broad picture of UK religions. Children compare their own beliefs and practices to those of Christianity and other world religions. Children are encouraged to find common threads between the main world religions as well as explore and express their own spiritual beliefs.  The religions studied represent those most represented across the UK.  These religions are Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism.   Children will also be supported to develop skills of enquiry, interpretation, evaluation and reflection in R.E.

From September 2023, we have adopted the Opening Worlds humanities curriculum for history, geography and RE for KS2.  

Opening Worlds curriculum and its associated teaching approaches will secure the highest possible quality of education for pupils. This is because the curriculum ensures that the subjects reflect the wide reference and academic practices, outside of school, to which they refer. In addition the material is organised so that pupils use earlier material to access to later material and so that pupils start to see how everything connects within a subject.

 Opening Worlds has strongly recommended that the material is taught in sequence because each part makes the next part much more understandable.  Numerous words that are explicitly taught and practised in Year 3 are then taken for granted in lessons in Year 4-6.  If children do not have the secure knowledge of the content and vocabulary of the Year 3 curriculum this is likely to slow progress and limit enjoyment.

All key stage 2 children have, therefore, started with the Year 3 Opening Worlds curriculum.  As a result of moving from the school’s previous curriculum to Opening Worlds, the school has identified a small number of content gaps.  These have been noted and will be addressed through our choice of books that are used in English and read to children, field trips and acts of collective worship.