Religious Education & Worldviews

Intent

At Salisbury Manor Primary, we believe that it is vital for all our pupils to learn from and about religion, so that they can understand the world around them. Through Religion and Worldviews, pupils develop their knowledge of the world faiths, and their understanding and awareness of the beliefs of others. This also contributes to their developing knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes, which are necessary for their self-fulfillment and their development as active and responsible citizens.

The Salisbury Manor Curriculum for religious and worldviews provides all children, regardless of their background, with:

Relevant and coherent substantive knowledge that is built gradually using subject-specific pedagogy from EYFS to Year 6 and beyond.
Substantive knowledge is selected to build pupils’ understanding of three vertical concepts:
- Sacrifice - Giving something up for the benefit of someone else is a recurring concept across religious and worldviews.
- Knowledge & Meaning - Beliefs impact how people make sense of the world: humanity’s ideas of right and wrong; truth, meaning and purpose
- Human Context - Human beings exist in, and are influence by, their place in time and their geographical, political and social context (Person, Time & Place).
A focus on developing our disciplinary knowledge through the types of conversation and methods and processes required to be scholarly in the studies of Theology (beliefs), Philosophy (thinking) and Social Sciences (living).

A Worldviews approach provides opportunities for all pupils to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, but also to be taken beyond their own experiences. The Religion & Worldviews curriculum teaches pupils about diversity within and between beliefs, cultures and worldviews from across the world, and seeks to teach the skills and knowledge to hold respectful and informed conversations about religion and belief; to be religiously literate.

We acknowledge our moral responsibility in this role supporting our pupils to develop into rounded individuals capable of understanding different religions in society and varying points of view. We strive to support pupils to leave our school in year 6 being culturally aware of their local community, the region they live in and with wider world religions and beliefs.

We encourage our pupils to ask questions about the world and to reflect on their own beliefs, values and experiences. Our curriculum is enhanced further with trips to places of worship in our local area. We also welcome guest speakers from different religions and walks of life into our school to allow the children to learn about different faiths first-hand and to build connections.

We believe that religion and worldviews makes an important contribution to our school’s determination to promote community cohesion. It provides a key context to develop young people’s understanding and appreciation of diversity, to promote shared values and to challenge racism and discrimination. Salisbury Manor Primary believes that effective religion and worldviews will promote community cohesion in the school community, the community within which the school is located, the UK community and the global community’.

Implementation

The religious and worldviews curriculum has been carefully sequenced to ensure coverage and appropriate progression through substantive and disciplinary knowledge. Lessons include opportunities for formative assessment to ensure clear understanding of the topic and time is planned in to revisit if not. Use of retrieval practices to ensure knowledge is learnt and stored in the long-term memory.

Learning about religion includes enquiry into and investigation of the nature of religious faith, its key beliefs and teachings, practices, their impact on the lives of believers and communities and the varying ways in which these are expressed. It also includes the skills of interpretation, analysis and explanation. Pupils learn to communicate their knowledge and understanding using specialist vocabulary. Learning from religion is concerned with developing pupils' reflection on, engagement with and response to their own and others' experiences and their learning about religious faith. It develops pupils' skills of application, interpretation and evaluation of what they learn about religion. Pupils learn to develop and communicate their own ideas, particularly in relation to questions of identity, belonging, meaning, purpose, truth, values and commitments. In teaching religion and worldviews, it is vital that the skills are developed through the knowledge and understanding, and vice-versa. It is also important that pupils understand how their learning is progressing, and what they need to do to improve it.

Impact

Our religious and worldviews curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes for Religious Education;
A celebration of learning for each term which demonstrates progression across the school;
Pupil discussions about their learning;

In curriculum, children are challenged in their thought process to acknowledge, accept and understand different religions and ways of thinking. By visiting different places of worship, handling different artefacts, being immersed in culture, food, singing, dancing, festivals children will build up not only a tolerance but a deep respect for our community and the wider world we live in.

We feel it is important to widen horizons leading to stronger community cohesion. It is our vision and mission to open children's eyes to the vibrancy and wonder of the world around them. By the time children leave us in Year 6 we want them to have developed a love of culture and a curiosity to develop this in year 7 by having the discussion and thinking skills to consider other points of view that are differing to their own.