Religious Education

Curriculum Intent

1. To present engagingly a comprehensive content which is the basis of knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith; 
2. To enable pupils continually to deepen their religious and theological understanding and be able to communicate this effectively; 
3. To present an authentic vision of the Church’s moral and social teaching so that pupils can make a critique of the underlying trends in contemporary culture and society; 
4. To raise pupils’ awareness of the faith and traditions of other religious communities in order to respect and understand them. 
5. To develop the critical faculties of pupils so that they can relate their Catholic faith to daily life; 
6. To stimulate pupils’ imagination and provoke a desire for personal meaning as revealed in the truth of the Catholic faith; 
7. To enable pupils to relate the knowledge gained through Religious Education to their understanding of other subjects in the curriculum; 
8. To bring clarity to the relationship between faith and life, and between faith and culture. 
9. To challenge worldviews which promote racism, ignorance and religious hatred.  
10. To teach diversity of opinion in world views  
11. To enable our students to engage with the rich diversity in Britain.  
12. To challenge the concept of moral relativism and offer students alternative approaches to moral decision making.  
13. To develop a sense of collective responsibility for our earth’s resources.  
14. To support the spiritual, moral, cultural and social skills of our students.

RE Learning Journey

Religious Education is at the heart of every Catholic school. Religious Education in The English Martyrs Catholic School and Sixth Form College was described in the 2018 Section 48 Inspection report as follows –

‘English Martyrs is a good Catholic school. Staff and pupils display a sense of belonging to this highly supportive community. The Catholic Life of the school enables the building of strong relationships and respect for all. Staff and pupils play a major role in the activities which contribute to the Catholic Life of the school.’

Keystage 3

All students from in KS3 study Religious Education. The curriculum is reviewed on a yearly basis, meets Diocesan and New Bishop’s Curriculum Directory requirements and allows students to gain a wide range of skills in Religious Education. Formal written assessments are carried out at the end of each unit and Pupil Progress reported back to parents.

RE KS3 Curriculum Overviews

GCSE

Students do a compulsory EDUCAS GCSE RE syllabus, which has 3 elements which are examined at the end of Year 10-

• Judaism – Unit 1) Beliefs and Teachings and Unit 2) Practices.
• Applied Catholic Teaching – Unit 1) Sin & Forgiveness and Unit 2) Life and Death.
• Foundational Catholic Teaching – Unit 1) Origins & meaning and Unit 2) Good & evil.

There is no coursework element to the course.

RE GCSE Curriculum Overviews

Sixth Form

Philosophy of religion – Learners will study: ancient philosophical influences/the nature of the soul, mind and body/arguments about the existence or non-existence of God/the nature and impact of religious experience/the challenge for religious belief of the problem of evil/ideas about the nature of God/issues in religious language.

Religion and ethics – Learners will study: normative ethical theories/the application of ethical theory to two contemporary issues of importance/ethical language and thought/debates surrounding the significant idea of conscience/sexual ethics and the influence on ethical thought of developments in religious beliefs.

Developments in religious thought – Learners will study: religious beliefs, values and teachings, their interconnections and how they vary historically and in the contemporary world/sources of religious wisdom and authority/practices which shape and express religious identity, and how these vary within a tradition/significant social and historical developments in theology and religious thought/key themes related to the relationship between religion and society.

There is no coursework element to the course.

Sixth Form General RE / MET (Morals, Ethics & Philosophy) – All Sixth Form students study a Morals, Ethics & Philosophy General RE course for a double period per week. In the course they will examine areas such as The Just War, Capital Punishment, Human Rights, Science versus Religion debate and the Ethics of areas like Abortion and Euthanasia. There is a yearly Conference examining one of the areas from the course.

RE Sixth Form Curriculum Overviews