Leigh Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School
Religious Education
Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, Leigh
RE Lead – Mrs T Nice and Miss L Sixsmith
“Let the children come to me and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
(Matthew 19:14)
Intent
At Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School, through Religious Education, we aim to:
· Engage in a systematic study of the mystery of God, of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, the teachings of the Church, the central beliefs that Catholics hold, the basis for them and the relationship between faith and life.
· Enable pupils continually to deepen their religious and theological understanding and be able to communicate this effectively.
· Present an authentic vision of the Church’s moral and social teaching to provide pupils with a sure guide for living and the tools to critically engage with contemporary culture and society.
· Give pupils an understanding of the religions and worldviews present in the world today and the skills to engage in respectful and fruitful dialogue with those whose worldviews differ from their own.
· Develop the critical faculties of pupils so to bring clarity to the relationship between faith and life, and between faith and culture.
· Stimulate pupils’ imagination and provoke a desire for personal meaning as revealed in the truth of the Catholic faith. - Enable pupils to relate the knowledge gained through religious education to their understanding of other subjects in the curriculum.
(RED, To Know You More Clearly, 2023)
Within our school, we want to ensure that all children are well prepared and are life-long learners. We therefore aim to present comprehensive and engaging content which provides the basis of understanding of the Catholic faith. We aim to facilitate children’s engagement with their own and other’s beliefs so that they can develop good attitudes and dispositions, underpinned by a love of learning and a desire to continue to learn. We ensure that children are offered a sense of self-worth through their experience of belonging to a caring community and an awareness of the demands of religious commitment in everyday life.
For all children, Religious Education is a cross curricular subject and a rigorous academic discipline – as such, it is to be taught, developed and resourced with the same commitment as any other subject so that children are able to apply their knowledge of religious truths and think creatively. Lessons are differentiated accordingly so that each child can succeed in the set tasks and to challenge them to take the next step in their own learning.
We will ensure that lessons are taught discretely and developmentally in order to deepen children’s knowledge of the Church’s moral and social teaching, as well as bringing clarity to the relationships between the Catholic faith and life, and between the Catholic faith and culture. We aim to nurture engagement with questions of meaning and purpose, which will enable them to think critically about their own questions of meaning and purpose.
Implementation
To fulfil our intentions, we use the new Religious Education Directory (RED), To Know You More Clearly, which has been approved by the Bishops’ Conference for the various age groups within our school. This has been introduced in EYFS and Year One so far.
We also currently use the “Come and See” programme of Religious Education from Year 2 to Year 6, recommended by the Archdiocese of Liverpool.
For further details and guidance on both programmes of study, please refer to the RE Handbook.
