Intent

At Kensworth CE Academy we aim to provide a school community built on the foundations of our 'Christian Values', where all children feel safe, secure, welcome, included, challenged and nurtured and where they can grow personally, academically, socially and spiritually.

We are committed to providing a high quality RE curriculum, which is engaging, inclusive and inspiring, where pupils can gain the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to handle questions raised by religion and belief, and reflect on their own ideas and ways of living. 

The aims of RE are to enable pupils to:

• Know about and understand Christianity as a diverse global living faith through the exploration of core beliefs using an approach that critically engages with biblical text;
• To gain knowledge and understanding of a range of religions and worldviews, appreciating diversity, continuity and change within the religions and worldviews studied;
• To engage with challenging questions of meaning and purpose raised by human experience and existence;
• To recognise the concept of religion and its continuing influence on Britain’s cultural heritage and in the lives of individuals and societies in different times, cultures and places; and
• To explore their own religious, spiritual and philosophical ways of living, believing and thinking.

Implementation

We use Understanding Christianity resources to support our teaching of Christianity and the Local Agreed Syllabus to support our teaching of world faiths.

The use of the resource Understanding Christianity particularly supports the development of the theological perspective.

A sequential curriculum map has been designed in order to allow pupils to become religiously literate through developing, year on year, their knowledge and skills.  Our Curriculum is a spiral curriculum aimed at developing mastery of knowledge.

In accordance with the Statement of Entitlement (2019), at least 60% of curriculum time is allocated to the teaching of Christianity. This entitlement is met both through the weekly or blocked teaching of Religious Education, and through additional ‘RE’ days.

• At Key Stage One, pupils study Christianity, Judaism and Islam, with reference made to other principal religions, beliefs and worldviews.
• At Key Stage Two pupils study Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism, with reference made to other principal religions, beliefs and worldviews.

Children at Kensworth CE Academy are taught by teachers who have a secure subject knowledge and are trained in teaching Religious Education, supported by the Diocese of St Albans Education team.

Religious Education uses an enquiry-based approach to learning. This is based on the best practice framework in Understanding Christianity and the Locally Agreed Syllabus. This approach enables pupils to focus on an enquiry question to:

Make sense of beliefs and ideas

Understand the impact of beliefs and ideas

Make connections between beliefs and ideas.

A range of teaching strategies are used to ensure learning is challenging and relevant including the use of art, music, thinking skills, artefacts and stories.

Where possible we want our pupils to have opportunities to encounter local faith communities through visits to local places of worship or visits from members of local faith communities.

Right of Withdrawal Under the 1944 and 1988 Acts

Parents have a right to withdraw their children from Religious Education or parts of Religious Education. On the extremely rare occasion that parents wish to do so, we would encourage them to discuss this with the Head Teacher first. 
 
Impact

Religious education is monitored through a variety of methods to ensure that the children are receiving a consistent progression throughout the school. This is achieved through book looks, pupil voice and regular feedback within each lesson. Religious education is considered a core academic subject at Kensworth CE Academy and the children’s knowledge is assessed regularly through R.E. assessments linked to each unit.