Our Subject Leader for RE is Mrs Kath Savage

Core Values - Faith, Friendship and Love

Our Religion and Worldviews approach focuses on religion and worldviews as personal and diverse. It aims to reflect the changing nature of religion and worldviews in modern Britain and help children to understand that religion and worldviews are a lived experience for people and communities. Children should become increasingly reflective about their own worldview and how it is influenced.

Every person has their own worldview, their way of looking at and explaining life and the world. This may be religious or non-religious, organised or personal.

Organised worldviews are an established philosophy, attitude or set of beliefs with a group of believers or followers and may include certain practices. Christianity is an example of a religious, organised worldview. Humanism is an example of a non-religious organised worldview. Although organised worldviews have an established set of beliefs, there will be variations in the way individuals interpret and practise these beliefs.

Personal worldviews are an individual’s view of life and the world. They take different ideas and beliefs from religion, experience, and others’ worldviews and often change over time. A personal worldview may be in line with an organised worldview, may agree with some elements but disagree with others or may be a mix of many religious and non-religious worldviews.

Subject Aims

• Religion and Worldviews is primarily about enabling pupils to make academically informed judgements about matters of religion and belief which shape the local and global landscape. 
• Being religiously literate means that pupils will have the ability to hold balanced and well-informed conversations about religious and non-religious worldviews.
• Pupils will be able to make sense of religion and worldviews around them and begin to understand the complex world in which they live.
•  They will be encouraged to be curious and enabled to study the wisdom and beauty of religions and worldviews and to see that religion isn’t fixed, it is living, dynamic, changing, evolving throughout the world.
•  Pupils will be able to talk about their personal worldview.

Our Religion and worldviews curriculum covers a number of organised worldviews with increasing depth and will reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian whilst taking account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain.  Exploring concepts through an enquiry based approach, children will investigate a variety of worldviews, including but not limited to Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, Buddhist and Humanist.

Subject Aims

• RE is primarily about enabling pupils to make academically informed judgements about matters of religion and belief which shape the local and global landscape. 
• Being religiously literate means that pupils will have the ability to hold balanced and well-informed conversations about religious and non-religious worldviews.
• Pupils will be able to make sense of religion and worldviews around them and begin to understand the complex world in which they live.
• They will be encouraged to be curious and enabled to study the wisdom and beauty of religions and worldviews and to see that religion isn’t fixed, it is living, dynamic, changing, evolving throughout the world.
• Pupils will be able to talk about their personal worldview.

Our curriculum is based on the Cumbrian SACRE (Standing Advisory Council for RE) approved syllabus; Cumbrian Agreed Syllabus for RE 2023 

This syllabus promotes an understanding of religion and worldviews rooted in a disciplinary approach to RE so that pupils see religion and worldviews through different lenses and is not designed to indoctrinate pupils, or urge a particular religion or belief on pupils. In this syllabus, RE is rooted in the disciplinary approaches of theology, philosophy and human sciences:

THEOLOGY:  thinking through believing.
It is about asking questions that believers would ask.
It requires pupils to think like researchers and to look at concepts through a theological lens.

Pupils will explore questions and answers that arise from inside religious and non-religious worldviews.

PHILOSOPHY:  thinking through thinking.
It is about asking big questions that thinkers would ask.
It requires pupils to think like philosophers and to look at concepts through a philosophical lens.
Pupils will explore questions and answers raised through considering the nature of reality, knowledge, existence, and morality.

HUMAN SCIENCES:  thinking through living.
It is about asking questions that people who study lived reality or phenomena would ask.

It requires pupils to think like human or social scientists to look at concepts through a human science lens.
Pupils will explore questions and answers raised in relation to the impact of religions and worldviews on people and their lives.

How is RE part of the basic curriculum?

RE supports the aims of the school curriculum which is to be balanced and broadly based. This curriculum must:

• Promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society.
• Prepare pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

The purpose of RE is to develop religious literacy. The essential outcomes for RE are therefore related to the knowledge and understanding of religion and
worldviews. There are many other desirable outcomes for RE. For example, the subject may also contribute significantly to broader educational aims.