Religious Education forms part of the basic curriculum and makes a distinctive contribution to the whole curriculum. It makes a positive contribution to the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of children. It helps children to develop their knowledge of different religions and to understand about other faiths and traditions, and at the same time develop a clearer understanding of themselves as individuals.

At Shawlands School we strive to achieve a positive, caring ethos throughout that is based on respect for all. Our teaching and learning is structured to accommodate differences in ability, performance and maturity regardless of gender or of ethnic or cultural origins. The content of our religious education shows breadth and balance across and throughout the Foundation Stage and Key Stages 1 and 2.

The two keys aspects of learning RE are learning about religion and learning from religion.

Learning about religion includes:

• Investigations into the nature of religious faiths
• Its key beliefs, teachings and practices and impact on the lives of believers
• The skills of interpretation, analysis and explanation
• Communicating knowledge and using specialist vocab
• Identifying and developing an understanding of ethical issues
• Pupils’ understanding of individual religions and how they relate to each other

Learning from religion includes:

• Developing pupils’ reflection on the experiences and their learning about religious faith
• Developing skills of application, interpretation and evaluation of what they learn about religion
• Developing and communicating their own ideas ii n relation to questions of identify , belonging, meaning, purpose, truth, values and commitments
• Understanding how their learning in RE is progressing and what they need to do to improve it.

To support staff subject knowledge we work from the PlanBe scheme ensuring that it covers the same objectives as the The Barnsley LA RE syllabus