Garland Junior School

Intent

At Garland School, we believe that it is vital for all our children to learn from and about religion, so that they can understand the world around them. RE 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.

We will deliver a curriculum that:

• Enables children to have the correct terminology and vocabulary needed to ensure respect for beliefs are maintained.
• Celebrates and embraces the community in which it is situated, having links to local places of worship.
• Inspires creative learning through teaching practices that build on prior R.E. learning and allows for repetition and progression of skills that build on high starting points.
• Is inclusive, develops self-confidence and identifies that all our children are unique, and therefore we should all be tolerant of each other’s beliefs.
• Encourages our children to be inquisitive about other beliefs, developing inquiry-based R.E. skills that allow them to be culturally aware of the world around them.
• Promotes equality and understanding of British values and ensures they are prepared for life in modern Britain.
• Religious Education plays an important role, along with all other curriculum areas, particularly PHSE in promoting social awareness and understanding in our children. We encourage our children to ask questions about the world and to reflect on their own beliefs, values and experiences. Our curriculum is designed to encourage imagination, creativity, enquiry, debate and discussion through a variety of teaching and learning activities.

Implementation:

Garland delivers RE in line with the Pan-Berkshire Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education 2018-2023. (To be replaced by the 2025-2030 version). Our curriculum is tailored using Discovery RE, ensuring that our children know about and understand a range of religions and world views. 

Through inquiry- based learning, every year group studies Christianity and at least one other world religion. For each term, there is a key question related to the religion being studied that weighs up ‘evidence’ and reaches a conclusion based on this. Children will use their subject knowledge and apply it to the key question, rather than this knowledge being an end in itself. Through critical thinking, personal reflection into their own thoughts and feelings, and their growing subject knowledge, the children will develop an understanding of the different religions and world views that will promote understanding, tolerance and acceptance in the society and world that we live in. The curriculum is structured as follows and builds upon the learning at Mrs Bland’s.

There are no presumptions made as to the religious backgrounds and beliefs and values of the children and the staff. We value the religious background of all members of the school community and hope that this will encourage individuals to share their own experiences with others freely. All religions and their communities are treated with respect and sensitivity, and we value the links which are, and can be made between home, school, and a faith community. We acknowledge that each religion studied can contribute to the education of all our pupils.

Impact:

The children at Garland enjoy learning about other religions and why people choose, or choose not, to follow a religion. Through their R.E. learning, the children make links between their own lives and those of others in their community and in the wider world, developing an understanding of other people’s cultures and ways of life. As such, R.E. is invaluable in an ever-changing and shrinking world leading to a more understanding and compassionate future.