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 offers a place of integrity and security within which different or ‘risky’ questions can be tackled within a safe but challenging context.

In RE, 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.  They learn to appraise the value of wisdom from different sources, to develop and express their insights on response and agree or disagree respectfully.

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 once a week and is reinforced through assemblies, Bible stories and stories from other 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 or artefacts are used to help all children to access the RE lessons. We visit the local church to learn about the building and purpose.

We welcome visitors from different religions into 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 and a traditional “bonnet” parade.

Impact

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

• Engaged children who are all challenged.
• Confident children who can all talk about different religions and their teachings and the links between religion and everyday life.
• Lessons that use a variety of resources to support learning.
• Exposure to different religions, beliefs and cultures.
• Learning that is tracked and monitored to ensure all children make good progress.