Intent

The principal aim of Religious Education (RE) at Bledington Primary School is to explore what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live, so that our pupils can gain the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to handle questions raised by religion and belief, reflecting on their own ideas and ways of living. 

RE contributes dynamically to children and young people’s education here at Bledington Primary School by provoking challenging questions about the meaning and purpose of life, beliefs about God, ultimate reality, issues of right and wrong and what it means to be human.

Our world is enriched by a wide and profound diversity of cultures and beliefs. We as human beings are strengthened and empowered by learning from each other. Engaging and stimulating religious education helps to nurture informed and resilient responses to misunderstanding, stereotyping and division.  It helps children to interact with others who may have a different perspective on life. It offers a place of integrity and security within which different or ‘risky’ questions can be tackled within a safe but challenging context. 

In RE at Bledington, pupils discover, explore and consider different answers to these questions, in a local, national and global context, through learning about and from religions and other world views.  Our pupils learn to appraise the value of wisdom from different sources, to develop and express their insights on response and agree or disagree respectfully.

At Bledington, we believe that RE makes an important contribution to promoting British Values and our school values as well as understanding the impact it has for individuals and communities. As a small, rural primary school we are proud of our nurturing family atmosphere, our inclusive environment and our supportive values. We intend our teaching in RE to prepare our children for their adult life, by promoting acceptance of differing beliefs and worldviews and enabling them to combat prejudice in an inclusive environment.

Implementation

At Bledington Primary School, we follow the Gloucestershire Agreed Syllabus for RE 2017- 2022. This has been extended to run until 2024.

Teachers are familiar with previous and subsequent year group’s content in order to link learning and build on previous knowledge through planning and reviewing the class RE evidence book. When planning, teachers refer to the Gloucestershire agreed syllabus and shared assessment grids to ensure that progression is followed throughout the school.

RE is taught every fortnight in each class and is reinforced through assemblies, stories from a range of religions at story time and cross curricular links if possible.

Time is taken to make sure that the correct language is used for each year group and this vocabulary is developed as the cohorts move through the school.

Open ended questions are used to allow children to access learning at their own level. Activities are differentiated and resources, artefacts and ICT are used to support all children in accessing learning. We provide a variety of teaching methods and opportunities for RE learning both inside and outside the classroom. Activities include discussion, drama, art and written tasks. We appreciate the positive impact that local faith communities can have on children’s experience in RE. Therefore, at Bledington we encourage visits to places of worship and welcomes visitors from different faith communities. We have strong links with our local church, St Leonard's, and we visit the church to learn about the building and its purpose. We welcome visitors from different religions into our school to tell us about their beliefs, either in a whole school assembly or during class lessons.

We also learn about various festivals and cultural events. At Bledington, our infants participate in a Nativity play and at Christmas we hold a carol service in our local church. Harvest is celebrated with a collection for our North Cotswold Food Bank whilst Easter celebrations include a whole school egg hunt, an Easter garden competition and a traditional “bonnet” parade.

RE assessment is based on teachers' assessment of children. Children have the opportunity to respond to live feedback within RE lessons. At the end of each unit of learning, teachers make a summative judgement about the attainment of each child. Progress in RE is reported annually to parents. Reports to parents are made verbally through parents’ evenings where appropriate and written once a year on their end of year report.

Impact

As a result of our Religious Education teaching at Bledington, you will see:

• Engaged, enthusiastic children who are all challenged and who speak positively about their learning in RE.
• Confident children who can all talk about different religions and their teachings, the links between religion and everyday life.
• Exposure to a range of different religions, beliefs and cultures resulting in an awareness of different religious and non-religious worldviews, outlooks and backgrounds.
• Learning in RE that demonstrates a clear journey, within each year group and across the whole school. 
• Children using vocabulary related to RE that develops as children progress through the school. 
• Learning that is tracked and monitored to ensure all children make good progress. We carefully monitor our planning and our pupils’ books and we carry out pupil voice interviews. Monitoring progress in this way ensures that our children are receiving a high-quality, challenging and meaningful RE curriculum.