Overview
Religious Studies is a forward thinking and creative department with three specialist staff, teaching Religion, Philosophy and Ethics (RPE) from Key Stage Three through to Key Stage Five. The RPE curriculum enables students to develop a balanced and broad understanding of the world, create fully informed beliefs and values and develop skills competitive in a modern workplace. RPE also contributes to pupils’ personal development and well-being, and to community cohesion by promoting mutual respect and tolerance in a diverse community.
RPE aims to provoke challenging questions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, beliefs about god, the self and the nature of reality, issues of right and wrong, and what it means to be human. It develops pupil’s knowledge and understanding of principle religions, beginning with Christianity, other religious traditions and world views. The curriculum is influenced by the requirements of the locally agreed SACRE syllabus but goes beyond it in both subject matter and skills developed.
The RPE curriculum, in all key stages, aims to create inquisitive and self-reflecting learners yet, at its core is knowledge and skill development. Three types of knowledge are the “pillars of progress” within RPE; substantive knowledge, ‘ways of knowing’ (i.e., how to know) and personal knowledge (building an awareness of one’s own presuppositions and values about different beliefs, traditions and scholarly positions).
To ensure rigour, RPE lesson intentions are based on successively challenging skills (describe, explain, apply, analyse and justify, synthesis and evaluation). Through the development of these skills our students will also develop the skills of investigation, interpretation, reflection, empathy and self-expression although these will not be formally assessed independent of the aforementioned skills.
You can find more information on our religious studies curriculum by clicking on the links below.
Please click here to read a parental leaflet about the RSE curriculum requirements.
In addition, this Q&A website from the DfE may be useful.