The purpose for teaching Religious Education
At Eastfield Primary School, the purpose of Religious Education (RE) is to raise the children’s awareness of a variety of religions; teaching the beliefs, cultures and traditions. Religious Education provides avenues for our pupils to understand important things about the world and themselves as individuals.
At Eastfield, we deliver RE in order to broaden our children’s horizons. We aim to recognise and celebrate the variation of beliefs we have within our school, and encourage all children to enjoy their celebrations.
We believe in delivering religious education to our students, not religious instruction. We teach children how common themes weave throughout different religions, for example the importance of; truth, sharing and honesty to name a few.
It is very important to us that children at our school feel seen and represented within our RE curriculum. Alongside this, we recognise the multi-cultured community and city in which we live, and we endeavour to ensure children understand the beliefs of others.
The teaching and learning of RE
Our children’s learning journey starts in pre-school and reception, with storytelling and the discussion of religious festivals and celebrations. We teach RE through a whole school approach: year groups learns about the 6 main world religions, in addition to the non-religious world view of Humanism. These include: Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam and Judaism. A new religion is taught every half term, building upon the previous knowledge learnt in previous years, thus expanding and deepening their knowledge of the world around them.
Within each year group, a ‘big question’ is explored with the children, this aims to promote independent thought and encouraging philosophical thinking.
We aim for children to know and understand that religion and non-religions have traditions and celebrations. We immerse the children into RE through hosting celebrations of religions on a 2-yearly rotation basis. Last year we celebrated: Harvest Festival by taking donations of food and giving them to our local food bank; Diwali where each child made a Diya lamp and we invited our families and community in for a night walk; Holi by throwing a colour fun run at school; Eid with a picnic in the school hall where staff and children shared how their family’s celebrated Eid, with the rest of the school.
This year, we will be celebrating Easter with a whole-school Easter egg hunt; Hanukkah with a dreidel competition; Vesak with in-class celebrations, which may include puppet shows, meditation, performances and dancing.
The outcomes of our RE curriculum
By the time children leave Eastfield, they have a broad understanding of the world around them; recognising that people have different faiths and beliefs. The children will have an understanding of the roots of these beliefs and the will be able to discuss knowledge around these religions.
| Term | Religion |
| Autumn 1 | Christianity |
| Autumn 2 | Hinduism |
| Autumn 2 | Judaism |
| Spring 2 | Sikhism |
| Summer 1 | Islam |
| Summer 1 | Buddhism |
Continued Professional Development
We understand and value the need for continued professional development within our teaching team and so ensure a period of staff meeting time is given to keeping knowledge up-to-date on religious education and ensuring our teachers feel confident in their delivery.