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RE

At St. Paul’s we use the ‘Surrey Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education in Surrey schools’ (Surrey SACRE) by the Diocese of Guildford as our school curriculum.  It provides a skill based, progressive curriculum that has been well considered and prepared for schools, with input from leaders of all faiths.  The adopted RE curriculum is designed to be coherent, utilises multi-disciplinary skills and builds pupils’ schemata, from EYFS to KS4. In addition, the syllabus helps pupils to understand their own and others’ worldviews, religious and non-religious, and appreciate the influences of these on everyday life.

The units of work outline substantive knowledge, ways of knowing (viewed through the multi-disciplinary ‘lenses’ of theology, sociology and philosophy) and personal knowledge, as well as key questions that might be asked to help shape the learning in different ways, and end of phase expectations. This supports the recommendations of Ofsted’s RE Research Review.

Each unit begins with a Big Question, broken down into weekly enquiry questions, which will enable our pupils to gain an understanding, along with key knowledge and skills, to reflect on how people of other faith live, and where they themselves belong in the world. Pupils will have opportunities to ask Big Questions about our role as humans. We support our children in enquiring about wider theological and philosophical questions to broaden their knowledge on life’s great wonders. 

We would like our children to express insight into faith practices and develop their spirituality through windows, mirrors and doors. All of the units are linked by a ‘golden thread’: the concepts of God, Community and Identity – the ‘multi-disciplinary lenses’. 

This curriculum enables us to make our children aware of a wide range of religions and beliefs that exist within our society.  It also includes non-denominational viewpoints such as Humanists through thematic topics such as ‘Why is harvest a worldwide celebration?’ and ‘Where did it all begin?’