RE intent

At Bramley St. Peter’s, we believe that religious education (RE) plays an important role in defining the school’s distinctive Christian character. Our RE learning journey provides a foundation for children to flourish into curious, spiritual, respectful and open-hearted individuals.  The skills, values and attitudes developed in RE are at the heart of our friendly and welcoming community, where the children are encouraged to have a positive sense of identity and belonging, guided by the values and beliefs of our Christian faith.

The RE curriculum is designed to be challenging and to enable children to explore Biblical texts and to understand how they are important in the lives of Christians today, allowing children to make connections to their own lives and beliefs. It develops children’s knowledge and understanding of Christianity, other principal world religions, religious traditions and world-views, which offers answers to life’s big questions. This helps to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement, enabling children to become responsible citizens and preparing them for their current and future world in modern Britain and global society.

Learning about the beliefs of other religions is integral to building the children’s understanding of the world and enables them to develop respect for others and their beliefs and helps to challenge prejudice and appreciate and celebrate cultural diversity.

The RE curriculum has been carefully planned so that our children make natural links with other subjects. We provide opportunities for spiritual development and incorporate visits and visitors enrich our curriculum further.

RE curriculum at Bramley St Peter's

As a Church of England Voluntary Aided School, Religious Education is firmly rooted in Christianity. There is no guidance directly given in the National Curriculum about the teaching of RE. Bramley St Peter’s uses the Diocesan Syllabus for Religious Education from the Dioceses of Leeds and York, including the ‘Understanding Christianity: Text, Impact, Connections’ resource as recommended by The Diocese of Leeds. The school’s long term plan has been designed to incorporate the units from both resources.

To create our curriculum for the teaching of RE, we use ‘Understanding Christianity’ which has been devised specially for the teaching of Christianity in schools. We use the Diocesan Syllabus for the teaching of other religions and thematic units.

Within our lessons we focus on 3 areas: 'Making Sense of the text', 'Understanding the Impact' and 'Making Connections'. These three strands form the basis of each unit taught and intertwine to ensure full coverage across the Religious Education (RE) curriculum towards the stated outcomes. These aims of each of these areas are described below:

Making sense of the text  

• Identifying and making sense of core religious and non-religious concepts and beliefs.
• Understanding what these beliefs mean within their traditions.
• Recognising how and why sources of authority are used, expressed and interpreted in different ways.
• Developing skills of interpretation.  

Understanding the impact  

• Examining how and why people put their beliefs into action in diverse ways, within their everyday lives, within their communities and in the wider world.  

Making connections  

• Reasoning about, reflecting on, evaluating and connecting the concepts, beliefs and practices studied.
• Allowing pupils to challenge ideas and the ideas to challenge pupils’ thinking.
• Discerning possible connections between these ideas and pupils’ own lives and ways of understanding the world. 

Religions taught

Christianity is taught in all year groups. Christianity is taught in a spiral curriculum (see diagram below) focusing on different concepts e.g. creation which are built upon in each year group.

Different year groups also explore other religions and worldviews. Year 1 study Jewish people, Year 2 study Muslim people, Year 3 study Sikh people and Year 4 study Hindu people. Years 5 and 6 study a range of these religions and also study people with no religious beliefs. 

In Foundation Stage children explore the different aspects of religion and how they are special to people. They do this through sharing their own experiences and enjoying religious stories. 

In Key Stage 1 children begin to understand the importance of religion to different people.  They will have opportunities to reflect on their own feelings enabling them to develop a sense of belonging. 

This is further developed in Key Stage 2. Children will learn to recognise diversity within religion; comparing religions in order to find similarities and differences between them. They will develop effective communication of their own ideas and recognise and respect different viewpoints.   

RE assessment

Here is some information about how we assess RE at Bramley St Peter's.