Religious Education

‘RE is exceptional through its inspirational approach. The extremely high quality planning,
training and teaching of the curriculum ensures that all pupils can make excellent progress. A
range of religions and other worldviews are studied sensitively, enabling all pupils to engage
fully.’ SIAMS 2023

At Aston St Mary’s School, Religious Education and our Values Education underpin everything that we do. We believe that children should be taught to become religiously literate, meaning that they gain an excellent knowledge and understanding of Christianity and the other principle religions found in Great Britain and the World. We want our pupils to not only know about and understand the importance of religion, faith and spiritual practises, but also be able to clearly articulate their own thoughts and beliefs as a result. Children learn to reflect on what they have learned and think about the impacts that these morals and teachings have on their own lives and the lives of those around them. We use an enquiry-based approach to teaching RE that allows pupils to dig deep into Christianity and other religions. This will help them to appreciate the way that religious beliefs shape life and our behaviour, develop the ability to make reasoned and informed judgements about religious and moral issues and enhance their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

As a Church of England Voluntary Aided School, the teaching of Christianity is important and is reflected in the fact that 60% of all RE teaching time is dedicated to Christianity. We teach using ‘Understanding Christianity’, a rich resource that unpacks core concepts in Christianity:

• God
• Creation
• The fall
• People of God
• Incarnation
• Gospel
• Salvation
• Kingdom of God

Alongside this, we use ‘Discovery RE’, a high-quality enquiry based resource, which allows pupils to dig deep into other religions. These are:

• Islam
• Judaism
• Sikhism
• Hinduism
• Buddhism

RE enrichment opportunities are taken wherever possible. Examples of these are days have been dedicated to: exploring Christianity through art, homelessness, Christmas around the world, Islam enrichment day, Holy Trinity day and many more.

We value the religious background of all members of our school community and hope that this encourages people to share their own experiences with others freely. All religions, cultures and communities are treated with respect and sensitivity.

The impact of our RE teaching can be clearly seen through the way that our pupils are able to articulate key concepts of religion. Standards are high and inline with other subjects. Teachers assess progress throughout the year and high-quality work can be seen in all RE books across the school. Pupils take pride in their RE work and in their lessons. Their knowledge and understanding of RE supports our Values Education, Collective Worship and across other subjects in school.