RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
INTENT:
At St. Joseph’s our RE curriculum enables children to lead your child to a closer relationship with Jesus Christ.
Vision statement
We expect everyone at St Joseph’s to demonstrate ‘Living, Learning and Loving together with Christ’ in a safe, welcoming and nurturing environment. We live, learn, work and serve together in communion with our whole community, to grow in God’s way and be witnesses to our faith so as to build God’s Kingdom here in Benwell.
Intent
At St Joseph’s we follow the aims of Religious Education as stated in the RE Curriculum Directory which are:
To present engagingly a comprehensive content which is the basis of knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith;
To enable pupils continually to deepen their religious and theological understanding and be able to communicate this effectively;
To present an authentic vision of the Church’s moral and social teaching so that pupils can make a critique of the underlying trends in contemporary culture and society;
To raise pupils’ awareness of the faith and traditions of other religious communities in order to respect and understand them;
To develop the critical faculties of pupils so that they can relate their Catholic faith to daily life;
To stimulate pupils’ imagination and provoke a desire for personal meaning as revealed in the truth of the Catholic faith;
To enable pupils to relate the knowledge gained through Religious Education to their understanding of other subjects in the curriculum;
To bring clarity to the relationship between faith and life, and between faith and culture.
Our beliefs
Since this is a Catholic school the precepts of the Catholic Faith form an integral part of the school. We believe that the children learn best from example and therefore we strive to live out the Gospel values with Christian principles and ideals permeating the whole curriculum.
IMPLEMENTATION:
To fulfil the above aims and to address the four areas of study outlined in the Religious Education Curriculum Directory, 2012 – Revelation, Church, Celebration and Life in Christ - the ‘Come and See’ programme is used at St Joseph’s as recommended by the Diocese.
Religious Education is taught through the process of Explore, Reveal, Respond. This follows the pattern of: the human search for meaning, God’s initiative in Revelation and the response in faith. This pattern is outlined both in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and in the Curriculum Directory. As the Directory states:
‘Teaching in Religious Education should help people be attentive to the meaning of their experiences, illumined by the light of the Gospel, so that they may respond to God more fully. Experience can also make the Christian message more intelligible.’
A variety of teaching and learning strategies will be used from across the curriculum adapted appropriately to the needs and learning styles of pupils.
All pupils in our school, irrespective of ability, faith and background will have appropriate differentiated access to the Religious Education programme.
Two other religions are taught from EYFS to Year 6 following the programme of study in ‘Come and See’. These are Judaism, which is usually taught in the Autumn, and Islam, which is taught either in the Spring or Summer. At least one week’s teaching and learning time per year is given to each.
10% of curriculum time is allocated to Religious Education. This does not include Collective Worship.
Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education
At St Joseph’s we use the ‘Life to the Full Programme’ which is a fully resources scheme of work to teach Relationships and Health Education (RHE) for Catholic primary schools. It is taught with a spiral approach to learning in which pupils will revisit the same topics at an age-appropriate stage through their school life. Our Mission Statement commits us to the education of the whole child (spiritual, physical, intellectual, moral, social, cultural, emotional) and we believe that Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education is an integral part of this education. Furthermore, our school aims state that we will endeavour to raise pupils’ self-esteem, help them to grow in knowledge and understanding, recognise the value of all persons and develop caring and sensitive attitudes.
IMPACT:
The impact of St Joseph’s is measured through Age Realted Standards (ARS)and monitored internally through in house moderation aswell as diocesan moderation and meetings with cluster schools.
The impact of RE at St Joseph’s is to provide the children with a Catholic education, which perceives life as a faith journey in the everyday Catholic life of the school as well as bringing this to the outside world.