Throughout their time at Hillbourne, children will learn about the theology, practices and festivals in Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Judaism.

The RE curriculum aims to ignite children’s interest in different religious and non-religious world views/faiths and have knowledge of the key concepts, preparing them with essential knowledge throughout their education. This begins with EYFS where the foundation is laid through a child centred approach, promoting the understanding that we and our families are all different and celebrate events in life in differing ways, and progresses through to key stage 1 and 2.

To enable our children to understand the impact of different world views and faiths in their own community we have regular visitors to talk about their faith and their festivals. We have made a close link to the local church, Christ Church (Creekmoor), and children partake in Harvest, Christmas and Easter celebrations either at the local church or through assemblies in school lead by the Vicar. Lessons across the school are also supported by the vicar, other members of Christ Church (Creekmoor) and members of other world views/faith communities, which bring the subject to life for the children.

The RE units have been carefully chosen to cover as wide-ranging content as possible without compromising depth, breadth, and coherence. They are progressive throughout the Key stages and offer challenge. Our curriculum has been developed from ‘Understanding Christianity’ and ‘Discovery’ schemes of work. Each unit plan includes lessons which teach knowledge and explore the impact of belief on everyday life, and lessons for the children to discuss their opinions and ideas based on this knowledge.

The RE curriculum has been designed to be both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced with repeated encounters in different contexts. Knowledge means not only substantive knowledge of the theology of the faiths or world views, but also knowledge of substantive concepts in RE such as ‘prayer’, ‘the afterlife’ and festivals and disciplinary concepts such as significance and interpretation.

• Build a strong sense of their own value, identity, and beliefs.
• Know about and have respect for a range of different faiths and religious and non- religious world views.
• To show understanding about why different faiths and world views have the practices and beliefs that they have.
• Know that life is precious and that it is important to cherish themselves and others.

• If pupils are withdrawn from RE, schools have a duty to supervise them, though not to provide additional teaching.  A pupil may be required to work in another area of the school, such as library or another classroom.
• Whilst parents or carers have a right to withdraw children from RE, they should note that children may also encounter religions and beliefs and wider aspects of faith in other areas of the curriculum from which there is no right of withdrawal.
• On occasion, spontaneous questions about religious matters are raised by pupils or issues related to religion arise in other curriculum subjects such as history or PSHEE. (For example, schools promote community cohesion and help pupils to understand ideas about identity and diversity, feelings and emotions within both religious and non-religious contexts.)