Religious Education
Our Vision for Religious Education
At Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, Religious Education is at the heart of our curriculum. Through high-quality RE, we seek to enable every child to encounter Christ, deepen their knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith and develop the religious literacy needed to think, speak and respond thoughtfully to questions of faith and life.
Our mission, “Together we live and learn; we play and pray,” is reflected in our approach to Religious Education. We want our pupils not simply to acquire knowledge about the Catholic faith, but to understand its meaning, ask thoughtful questions, make connections and consider how faith calls Christians to live.
We recognise each child as unique and created in the image and likeness of God. Our RE curriculum is therefore ambitious and inclusive. It enables all pupils, including those with SEND and those learning English as an additional language, to access rich theological content and develop increasingly sophisticated religious vocabulary and understanding.
While Religious Education contributes profoundly to the Catholic character of Sacred Heart, it is also a rigorous academic subject in its own right. Prayer and Liturgy and Catholic Life are distinct from curriculum RE and are developed through their own provision across the school.
Intent
Our Religious Education curriculum is rooted in the Religious Education Directory (RED), To Know You More Clearly and its model curriculum.
Through RE, we want our children to develop secure, connected and progressively deeper knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith. Pupils encounter Scripture, Catholic belief and teaching, the life and mission of the Church, sacramental life, prayer and the relationship between faith and lived experience.
We want every child to become increasingly able to:
- know and understand the story of salvation revealed through Scripture and the person of Jesus Christ;
- develop a rich and accurate religious vocabulary;
- make connections between Scripture, Catholic teaching, worship and Christian life;
- engage thoughtfully with important theological, moral and philosophical questions;
- explain what Catholics believe and why;
- encounter and understand other Christian traditions and other religions and worldviews with knowledge, respect and sensitivity;
- reflect upon what they have learned and consider its meaning and significance; and
- communicate their knowledge and thinking with increasing confidence, depth and theological accuracy.
Our curriculum is deliberately ambitious. We do not lower the theological ambition of RE because pupils are young. Instead, teachers carefully scaffold learning so that complex ideas become accessible while retaining their meaning.
This is particularly important within our diverse Sacred Heart community. Pupils come to us with different experiences of faith, language and religious knowledge. Our curriculum provides all children with the vocabulary, knowledge and opportunities they need to participate fully.
Implementation
The Religious Education Directory
Our curriculum is structured through the six curriculum branches of the RED:
Creation and Covenant
Prophecy and Promise
Galilee to Jerusalem
Desert to Garden
To the Ends of the Earth
Dialogue and Encounter
These branches provide a coherent journey through each academic year and across the school.
The curriculum follows the rhythm of the Church's liturgical year while progressively developing pupils' theological knowledge. As pupils move through Sacred Heart, important concepts are encountered again with increasing depth and sophistication.
This enables children to build connections rather than experience RE as a series of isolated topics.
How pupils learn in Religious Education
Our teaching is underpinned by the RED's four interconnected ways of knowing:
Understand
Pupils develop knowledge and understanding of Scripture, Catholic belief, teaching and tradition. They learn increasingly precise vocabulary and are taught to make connections between different aspects of their learning.
Discern
Pupils learn to think critically and theologically about what they have encountered. They consider different perspectives, ask questions, make reasoned judgements and explore the significance of Catholic belief and teaching.
Respond
Pupils consider how what they have learned relates to themselves and the world around them. They are given opportunities to reflect upon meaning and consider how faith is lived.
Dialogue and Encounter
Pupils learn about other Christian traditions, religions and worldviews. They develop the knowledge and vocabulary necessary to engage respectfully and meaningfully with people whose beliefs and experiences may be different from their own.
These ways of knowing ensure that RE involves much more than remembering facts. Children learn to know, understand, question, connect, discern and respond.
Scripture at the heart of learning
Sacred Scripture is central to our Religious Education curriculum.
Children encounter Scripture directly and are taught to understand its context, meaning and significance. As they progress through school, they develop an increasingly rich knowledge of the Bible and learn to make connections between different passages, people, events and themes.
Teachers explicitly teach the vocabulary and background knowledge children need in order to access Scripture successfully. This is particularly important for our younger pupils and children learning English as an additional language.
We want children to become confident in talking about Scripture rather than simply recalling Bible stories.
Vocabulary and religious literacy
Developing religious literacy is a key priority.
Children are explicitly taught appropriate theological and religious vocabulary and are expected increasingly to use this language accurately when speaking and writing about their learning.
Vocabulary is introduced carefully, revisited regularly and developed progressively so that pupils can articulate increasingly complex ideas as they move through the school.
We recognise that some theological concepts are challenging. Teachers therefore use carefully chosen images, artefacts, Scripture, discussion, modelling and other appropriate scaffolds to make learning accessible without diminishing its theological content.
RE curriculum time
Religious Education is a core curriculum entitlement at Sacred Heart and is allocated at least 10% of curriculum teaching time. This allocation is specifically for the teaching of curriculum RE. Prayer and Liturgy is additional to, and distinct from, the curriculum allocation for Religious Education.
This distinction is important to us. Children need both a rigorous programme of Religious Education in which they develop knowledge and understanding and rich opportunities to encounter God through the prayer and liturgical life of the school.
Inclusion and challenge
Our RE curriculum is for every child. Teachers use adaptive teaching to ensure that pupils with SEND can engage meaningfully with the same ambitious curriculum as their peers. Appropriate scaffolds may include visual support, pre-teaching of vocabulary, reduced recording demands, alternative means of communicating understanding and carefully structured questioning.
For pupils learning English as an additional language, explicit vocabulary instruction, visual representation, modelling and opportunities for purposeful talk support access to theological concepts.
Challenge in RE is not simply achieved by giving pupils more work. Children are challenged to make deeper connections, use evidence, explain their reasoning, apply increasingly precise vocabulary and consider theological ideas in greater depth.
Assessment in Religious Education
Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning in RE. Teachers assess what pupils know, understand and can do through a range of evidence, including discussion, questioning, written work and other appropriate responses.
Assessment is used formatively to identify what pupils have understood, where misconceptions remain and what needs to be revisited or developed next. Teachers consider pupils' learning against the expectations of the Religious Education Directory and use moderation to support consistency and accuracy of judgements.
Assessment in RE is concerned with pupils' knowledge, understanding and curriculum achievement. We do not assess a child's personal faith or the depth of their relationship with God.
Impact
By the time pupils leave Sacred Heart, we want them to have developed a rich and connected body of religious knowledge which enables them to speak confidently and thoughtfully about Catholic Christianity.
We want our pupils to:
- know key events, people and themes within Scripture and understand their significance;
- demonstrate secure knowledge and understanding of Catholic belief, teaching and tradition;
- use theological and religious vocabulary accurately and confidently;
- make meaningful connections between Scripture, belief, worship and Christian life;
- ask thoughtful questions and engage in theological discussion;
- use evidence to explain and justify their thinking;
- demonstrate informed knowledge and respect when discussing other Christian traditions, religions and worldviews; and
- recognise that what we learn in RE invites us to think deeply about ourselves, other people, our world and our relationship with God.
The impact of our curriculum is evaluated through pupils' work, pupil voice, assessment information, lesson visits, curriculum monitoring and moderation. Leaders use this evidence to identify strengths, address gaps and continually improve the quality of Religious Education.
Most importantly, we want our children to leave Sacred Heart with the knowledge and confidence to continue asking life's great questions and with a secure understanding of the Catholic faith from which they can explore those questions.
Religious Education at Sacred Heart
At Sacred Heart, RE is about more than knowing Bible stories. Our children learn to encounter Scripture, understand Catholic teaching, use the language of faith, ask important questions, make connections, discern meaning and respond thoughtfully.
We want every child to know more, understand more deeply and be able to speak confidently about what they have learned.
