We believe that Religious education (RE) makes a significant contribution to our children’s academic and personal development. It plays a key role in promoting social cohesion and the virtues of respect and empathy, which are important in our diverse society. If people have a better understanding of other faiths, they're less likely to be dismissive of issues that don't concern them directly. Better still, it promotes integration and a stronger sense of community. This is particularly true for Queen’s Park Primary School which celebrates having families from different backgrounds, traditions and religious beliefs from across the world.

We use the Westminster Agreed SACRE Syllabus which is the legal document to be followed for the teaching of religious education in Westminster schools from January 2007. The emphasis is on the process of learning and teaching based on conceptual enquiry and the importance of pupils and students developing their own beliefs and values. It can be read in two complementary ways.

Living Difference identifies that people following different beliefs actually live them out; we encounter different interpretations of the world and this has practical effects. We have to understand how and why people live differently from each other and respect their right to do so.

Living Difference identifies that respecting difference requires us to engage with difference confidently. We need to identify how and why we have different beliefs, attitudes and practices from other people. By doing this, we can gain respect from others.

The programme of study is structured into four main areas for each key stage:

• Enquiry and skills
• Knowledge and understanding
• Hierarchy of concept development
• Breadth of study

Enquiry and Skills

Enquiry and skills is concerned with the ability of the student to engage with the following elements:

• Enquire into religions, non-religious worldviews and human experience through the study of key concepts to enable students to focus their attention on the different ways people interpret their experience, religious and non-religious
• Contextualise concepts within religious and non-religious worldview belief and practice and specific situations to enable students to examine the application of the concepts to people’s lives
• Evaluate the concept to enable students to appreciate, critically consider and make informed judgements about religious belief and practice
• Communicate their own response to the concept to enable students to formulate and articulate their own beliefs and values
• Apply their response to their own and others’ lives to enable students to test critically their own beliefs and values against issues encountered in life.

A Methodology for Teaching and Learning

Students can be guided to enter into the process at key points. There are two obvious starting points – students’ own responses or the enquiry into concepts central to religious and non-religious worldviews. Students are, however, required to complete all the elements of the sequence in order to make sense of the concept in focus and its implication for themselves and others.

Knowledge and Understanding

Knowledge and understanding is concerned with the particular types of concepts pertinent to religious education.

Types of Concepts

• Concepts within the experience of most children irrespective of any religious or philosophical affiliation, for example, remembering, specialness, celebration, rights, duty, justice
• Concepts common to some religions and non-religious worldviews and also used in the study of them, for example, God, worship, symbolism, the sacred, discipleship, stewardship, martyrdom
• Concepts that are specific to particular religions or non-religious worldviews, for example, dukkha, Trinity, tawheed, redemption, khalsa, moksha, Torah

Whilst these concepts are not exhaustive it is important that students are introduced to a range of each type of concept in the course of their development through Key Stages 1 to 4

Breath of Study

At Key Stage 1 pupils are required to study Christianity and at least one other religion.

At Key Stage 2 pupils are required to study Christianity and at least two other religions.