Religious Education and World Views

RE Subject Overview

Our vision:

The Religious Education and World Views Department aims to ensure pupils have a broad and balanced spiritual curriculum studying a number of world religions. The curriculum ensures pupils have a thorough understanding of diverse philosophical and ethical viewpoints and gain critical thinking and evaluative skills.

It is our intent that pupils leave William Edwards School with a balanced and all-round knowledge of religion, diversity and the practices of people throughout the world. We do this through the following ‘Golden Threads’ of analysis that run through our Key Stage Three and Key Stage Four curriculum:

Religion in our World
Religious Beliefs
Religious Symbols
Religious teachings and scriptures
Religious buildings and places of worship
Religious celebrations and festivals.

As students develop their knowledge of the Golden Threads of the Religious Education curriculum so are the skills students are encouraged to develop through their application of ideas, evaluative skills and analysis applied to the key themes they will encounter; this will give them the ability to develop a range of skills that they will be able to use in later life, no matter what career path they choose. Within in our curriculum this is done by:

Pupils being challenged to question beliefs, values, meaning, purpose and truth, enabling them to develop their own attitudes towards religious issues as well as appreciate the diverse nature of religious beliefs across the world
Pupils will also gain an appreciation of how religion, philosophy and ethics form the basis of our culture and others
Pupils will develop analytical and critical thinking skills to equip them with the ability to work with abstract ideas and research skills.
Pupils are encouraged to make cross-curricular links to other subjects such as History; Geography; Sociology and Creative Curriculum.
Pupils are encouraged that their learning in Religious Education is not be passive and therefore the curriculum is designed to be interactive, to ignite pupil’s curiosity and engage them in the topics studied with a focus on experiential learning as well as other pedagogies.

All of the above elements are developed as pupils’ progress through the Religious Education curriculum. This in turn will help pupils grow in humanity and kindness and succeed in the being the best that they can be.