What is the quality of religious education and is it effective?

Our RE curriculum is based on the Hertfordshire Agreed Syllabus.  It uses the ‘Understanding Christianity’ and ‘Emmanuel’ resources to help plan for clear, progressive learning opportunities for pupils across the school.  This is a new model from September 2023 and has been changed to ensure that pupils can develop strong understanding of different world religions.  We have sequenced the curriculum to ensure that pupils revisit key learning in order to help them to remember more about world religions.  Those religions taught reflect the backgrounds of pupils within our school.

More information about our curriculum can be found on our RE page.

Teachers have all received training in how to deliver different parts of our curriculum, including in the Understanding Christianity resource.  This, alongside our religion-based knowledge organisers, help to ensure that fundamental knowledge is revisited and that we check for learning and misunderstandings.  

In class, pupils record their work in a number of ways.  Particularly in EYFS and KS1, class floor books are used to record reflections and to share points from group discussions.  For individual work, books are used or pupils participate in activities to aid memory and learning.  Each year group will attend at least one RE-based trip each year to enrich their curriculum learning.  

What is the impact of this?

Pupils have been shown to be able to talk about their learning in RE well and with enthusiasm.  Using elements of the new teaching resources, there have been opportunities for pupils to be able to recognise and begin to discuss the links between different areas of knowledge and the things learnt about different world views in addition to things learnt in other subject areas.  The knowledge that pupils gain has been noted to help during other discussions, for example in other areas of learning or within worship.

Pupils are able to use class floor books and individual work to reflect on what they have learnt and discuss their views.  This is an area of development within school; how we get the correct balance of written recording and active engaging learning opportunities which allow pupils to know more and remember more.  

Across the school, pupils show an understanding of and respect for one another.  They listen carefully to each other in class, including when sharing their views, experiences and beliefs, and respond sensitively and thoughtfully.

In the last few years, we have entered the NATRE Spirited Arts competition, where each class spent time exploring the idea of spirituality and how different things made them feel.  They then looked at the following quote and created their work.  Below are some of our winning entries, which were sent for judging nationally.

“We have far more in common than that which divides us”

Jo Cox.

Sunflower - by Evie

What If? - by Unnum

Holy Words - by Blake