Religious Education

RE Overview 2023-24

Intent
Our curriculum is all the planned activities that we as a school organise in order to promote learning, personal growth and development. It includes, not only the formal requirements of the National Curriculum, but also the range of extra-curricular activities that the school organises in order to enrich the experience of our children. 
 
It also includes the ‘hidden curriculum’, or what the children learn from the way they are treated and expected to behave. We aim to teach our children how to grow into positive, resilient and responsible people, who can work and co-operate with others, whilst developing knowledge, skills and attitudes to learning, in order that they achieve their true potential.  
 
Implementation
 
Religious Education at Hillside Primary School is taught according to the Norfolk Agreed Syllabus (2019).
 
Aims: 
To know about and understand a range of religious and non-religious worldviews by learning to see these through theological, philosophical and human/social science lenses.
 
To express ideas and insights about the nature, significance and impact of religious and non-religious worldviews through a multi-disciplinary approach.
 
To gain and deploy skills rooted in theology, philosophy and the human/social sciences engaging critically with religious and non-religious worldviews.
 
We use resources from the Diocese of Norwich website including the exemplar plans.
We use units from the ‘Understanding Christianity’ resource. 

Each year group covers 4 enquiries during the year, these can be found on the RE Long Term Curriculum Plan. The key skill descriptions which inform our teacher assessments, and guide RE planning, can be found on the RE Skills progression document. 

In EYFS, children experience RE in three key areas of learning in the new EYFS curriculum:
Communication and Language
Personal, Social and Emotional development
Understanding the World
 
Impact
In EYFS 89.7% of pupils were at the expected level in People, cultures and communities (Part of Understanding the World).

The number of children who reached the expected level at the end of year 1 has remained steady at 83%. In year 2 there was an increase from 73% (2023) to 84%.

In Key Stage 2 we introduced more challenging enquiries and trialed different assessment methods this year. Year 4s attainment at the expected level remained steady, being 70% in 2022 and 76% in 2023.Other KS2 year groups have seen a fall in the number of children assessed to be at the expected level. From 80%- 70% in year 3, from 90%-76% in year 5 and from 91% to 75% in year 6. To address this issue, from September 2023 there will be extra time spent on RE, and the RE sessions will not always fall at the times of the year eg. Christmas, when other school events use lesson time.