St Mark's CE Primary School

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Our Vision and values at St Mark’s 

We have a renewed vision and values that is distinctively Christian and recognised and understood by the whole school community. 

 Our vision is supported by scripture:  

‘Let your light shine’  

Mathew 5:16  

Our Christian values are clearly visible and permeate through everything that we do. It can be easily recalled when reflecting on behaviour incidents-using the language of letting your light shine and not dimming the light of others.  

The HERO toolkit has been reviewed and updated to reflect the Christian narrative and includes physical resources as a representation of each value. 

 Intention 

At St Mark’s, our intention is to deliver high quality teaching and learning of RE. Our curriculum is designed with this vision in mind and we have created an ambitious, broad and balanced curriculum which provides opportunities for children to unlock their potential and uncover their talents-gifts from God. 

For an overview of RE at St Mark’s school, please see slides. 

 Implementation 

Alongside teaching RE as a core subject at St Mark’s, collective worship or assemblies are every day, together with Christian meditation. 

St Mark’s RE curriculum has been developed in line with the national statement of entitlement to RE and based upon the school’s vision and within the context of our school community using Brighton & Hove’s SACRE guidance. The curriculum has been developed with the intent of achieving a balanced approach to RE with 67% of the curriculum based on Christianity, with the remaining units being based on other world faiths. This reflects the non-Christian faiths within our community and enables pupils to understand diversity to develop their own worldview.  

The curriculum covers a different unit each half term for all year groups, ensuring that learning has depth. Understanding Christianity supplemented with the Emmanuel Project resources are used to teach RE at St Mark’s. Both sets of resources match up to The Statement of Intent, are enquiry based and concept based. 

See St Mark’s Guide to Teaching and Learning RE for more information about our curriculum and approaches.  

Aims of teaching and learning RE are: 

  The long term RE plan sets out the units for teaching and learning using Understanding Christianity and Emmanuel Project resources. Through the use of these resources, we aim to enable pupils to achieve theological literacy who are then able to make sense of texts, interpretations and understand the impact of beliefs in the lives of faith believers, making wider connections to themselves.  

‘Believing. Living. Thinking’.  

Although each year group have dedicated RE lessons, opportunities to link pupil’s RE learning with other subjects such as, English, PSHE or topic work is encouraged. 

Emmanuel Project resources are used to teach other world faiths to enable children to develop their own worldview by learning about non-Christian faiths such as; Judaism, Islam and Hindusim. In line with the Brighton and Hove RE syllabus requirements and SACRE, the curriculum provides pupils with learning a diverse range of other religions so that they can develop their understanding of other faiths and their own worldview.  

Impact 

Teachers use a range of assessment strategies to make holistic and accurate judgement to assess pupil’s understanding. There are also planned assessment opportunities at the beginning of each unit to provide a comparison for assessing at the end.