‘Personal and shared prayer is thoroughly integrated into individuals’ lives and is spoken of as a natural and individual response.’ – SIAMs 2019

At St Faith’s, Religious Education is a core subject. We centre our teaching around our school vision, enabling children to live life to its fullness and that every child will flourish and reach their full potential. As a church school and part of the Southwark Diocese Board of Education, we promote RE as not just an academic subject but as one that lies at the heart of our curriculum and holds an important role in promoting values across the school.

We follow the Discovery R.E syllabus throughout the school, focusing on both Christianity and a range of other religions. Each RE topic has a focus question that is reflected upon throughout the term, with children learning both about and from different religions. Through the consistent high quality teaching and delivery of RE, the pupils at St Faith’s feel inspired and are encouraged to explore their own and others beliefs and cultural traditions in a positive and constructive way, showing respect for all faiths. This is supported with opportunities to visit local places of worship, such as a Hindu temple or the synagogue. We also invite visitors from different world faiths to come and share with us stories or traditions from their religions. We are linked with St Anne’s Church and attend special services there throughout the year, as well as our own collective worships regularly being led by Reverend Cecile.

Curriculum Aims:

The curriculum aims for RE at St Faith’s are:

• To apply an understanding of Christianity so that children can make reasoned and informed responses to life issues and moral choices;
• To help pupils reflect upon their own needs, experiences and questions and to confront what are sometimes referred to as ‘ultimate questions’;
• To enable pupils to understand the nature of Christian beliefs and the Anglican tradition through a study of: Creation, Prayer and Worship, the Life and Teachings of Jesus, Old Testament Characters, Living out the Faith and Christian Festivals; To enable pupils to understand the beliefs and practices of other world faiths;
• To teach tolerance and challenge prejudice towards people of different faiths through providing opportunities to develop an understanding of the value of living in a multicultural, multi-faith and multi-lingual society;
• To encourage pupils to develop open minds to new and different concepts and to form their own opinions based on evidence and argument;
• To maintain links with local churches and other religious communities;
• To learn from religions in addition to gaining knowledge and understanding about religions.