Religious Education has a significant role for the development of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. It promotes respect and open-mindedness towards others with different faiths and beliefs and encourages pupils to develop their sense of identity and belonging through self-awareness and reflection. The principle aim of RE is to engage pupils in an enquiry approach where they can develop an understanding and appreciation for the expression of beliefs, cultural practices and influence of principle religions and worldviews in the local, national and wider global community.

At Nightingale, we follow plans from the Diocese of Norwich which links to the Norfolk Agreed Syllabus for RE (2019).  This outlines the purpose of teaching RE in schools:

• High-quality RE will support pupils’ religious literacy
• Being religiously literate means that pupils will have the ability to hold balanced and well-informed conversations about religion and world views
• Pupils will be able to make sense of religion and worldviews around them and begin to understand the complex world in which they live
• RE is primarily about enabling pupils to become free thinking, critical participants of public discourse, who can make academically informed judgements about important matters of religion and belief which shape the global landscape

Religious Education has now been split into three disciplinary focuses/lens. The main focus is religious literacy, therefore the outcome being the children can talk about religion and use the three focuses to do this:

• Theology – Thinking through believing.
• Philosophy – Thinking through thinking.
• Human and Social Sciences – Thinking through living.

Each enquiry needs to start with a core question as a focus to engage the children, alongside the core knowledge. The core knowledge has been kept to a minimum to allow teachers to consider their own context and to ensure depth of understanding of key concepts, beliefs and practices.

Through our Religious Education curriculum, we aim:

• To engage pupils in enquiring into and exploring questions arising from the study of religion and belief, so as to promote their personal, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
• To provide learners with knowledge and understanding of Christianity and other principal religious traditions and beliefs represented in Great Britain.
• To develop their understanding of the ways in which beliefs influence people in their behaviour, practices and outlook.
• To enable learners to become aware of their own beliefs and values, to have a positive attitude and to the search for meaning and purpose in life.
• To encourage learners to develop a positive attitude towards other people who hold religious beliefs different from their own.
• To recognise that we are in an area with increasing multicultural representation and diversity and work to encourage tolerance and understanding of different religions and cultures.

All classes record their work and experiences from RE teaching and learning in a class book.

Schools are required to teach RE as part of the wider curriculum.  Parents can withdraw their children for all or part of the lessons.  This should be discussed with the class teacher in the first instance.