ATW – Religious Education
‘Schooling deprived of religious insights is poor education.’
Russell Kirk
Intent
At Atwood, we believe that learning about different religions helps to promote acceptance, respect and an understanding of diversity. We have chosen to follow the Croydon Agreed Syllabus for RE and as such teach a multi-faith curriculum. We have selected this curriculum as there is an emphasis on enquiry-based learning and it reflects the diversity of our school and local community.
Our RE curriculum aims:
- To enable pupils to reflect upon and understand the religious and spiritual beliefs, practices and insights and experiences that are expressed in humanity’s search for the meaning of life
- Provide opportunities for pupils to explore and express their own responses and personal beliefs
Implementation
We encourage our children to be curious, asking questions, researching and making links between the religions they have learnt about and their own lives.
World faiths and festivals are explored and celebrated both in the classroom and through regular Collective Worship assemblies, representing the wide range of religions within Atwood’s school community. Emphasis is placed on what we, as individuals and in different faiths, share in common, as well what makes us unique. Whether we are religious or not, we can reflect on their values and how these may or may not relate to our lives.
Our children make regular visits to local places of worship as well as welcoming visitors from various faiths and having the opportunity to look at artefacts from different religions too.
Areas of study through which our pupils will be working:
- Authority and Worship;
- Sacred and Inspirational Writings;
- Lifestyle and Celebrations;
- Challenge units.
The focused religions for each Key Stage in the Croydon Agreed Syllabus are:
- KS1- Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism;
- KS2- Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism
At both Key Stages, other religions and those which reflect the school community may also be studied using the challenge units. Whether we are religious or not there are signs of religion all around, the landscape is full of churches and of other places of worship. Belonging to an organised religion has an effect on many aspects of a person’s life. Any of these may show the rest of the world that we are members of a belief tradition, clothes, food, names, times and ways of celebration and what is considered important in life.
Religious education promotes pupils’ understanding of the multicultural and multi faith society that we live in today by enabling them to explore issues of belief and issues between faiths. Having learned about different faiths and beliefs, pupils are then encouraged to understand how we can interact with each other and explore interfaith issues of contemporary society.
RE is provided for all pupils at Atwood, and is inclusive, engaging and broad minded. Parents do have the right to withdraw pupils from RE: if you wish to do this, make an appointment with the head teacher. Atwood does not support selective withdrawal from RE.
Impact
The children at Atwood Primary enjoy learning about other religions and why people choose, or choose not, to follow a religion. Through their R.E. learning, the children are able to make links between their own lives and those of others in their community and in the wider world. Through the teaching of R.E. our children develop an understanding of other people’s cultures and ways of life which they are then able to communicate to the wider community. As Londoners, who see manifestations of many different types of religion on a daily basis, R.E. gives our children the opportunity to better understand how other people choose to live and why they choose to live in that way.