Religious education has an important part to play as part of a broad, balanced and coherent curriculum to which all pupils are entitled.
Religions and beliefs inform our values and are reflected in what we say and how we behave. Religious education also contributes to pupils’ personal development and well-being and to community cohesion by promoting mutual respect and tolerance in a diverse society. It offers opportunities for personal reflection and spiritual development, deepening the understanding of the significance of religion in the lives of others – individually, communally and cross-culturally. Exploring the concepts of religion or belief and their roles in the spiritual, moral and cultural lives of people in a diverse society helps individuals develop moral awareness and social understanding.
As part of the re-launch of RE, we have looked at the make-up of our school community in order to ensure that our own curriculum reflects the religions and/or beliefs of our families. Our curriculum now caters for our children who have a particular religion as well as celebrating families who may not follow a religion but who have other values and beliefs which are important to them. We feel that it is important for our children to learn about these values and what is important to people and to celebrate what is special to all of our families. We have therefore renamed RE and it is now called ‘Religion and Belief’.
This is a snapshot of some of the fantastic feedback from the Religion and Belief launch event for parents. All of the feedback from our parents was extremely positive and we look forward to providing similar events in the near future. We would like to thanks all of the parents and friends who were able to attend the event.
‘I’m very pleased that my child is progressing in her understanding of different cultures and beliefs. An excellent idea, I really enjoyed the afternoon.’
‘As parents, we enjoyed this event a lot. The children did very well and we can see that they learn lots about the different religions.’
‘It was fun to get involved with the children and they were able to answer any questions that I had about Sikhism.’
‘It was great to so the efforts that had gone in to preparing for the day. I look forward to similar days in future.’
‘I had a great journey through the different years and it was nice to see all the different levels of learning.’
‘What an impressive day! The children were so busy researching and the displays are great.’
‘I think it is such a good idea to help children understand and respect all the beliefs and values of different religions.’
‘This was a really well thought out and well organised event. The children were all interacting very well.’
‘I found visiting all of the different classes a very interesting experience.’
‘Such good learning – great work!
‘It was a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed it thank you.
‘The children’s learning is clearly very interesting – well done!’
‘It’s brilliant to see children learning about all of the different religions.’
‘It’s good to see that the children are learning new things, supporting each other and experiencing new things too.’
‘A really fun and informative event.’
‘Very, very interesting. I loved the teamwork between the children and the tour guides were excellent.’
‘Everything I saw was very good. I was very happy to see that the children are learning about different religions. I myself learned new things.’
‘It was nice to see the children using creative resources to learn about faith and belief.’