The intent of our 3 year rolling programme is to ensure our children have a solid understanding of the Christian faith whilst dedicating time to other religions of the world including, Islam, Judaism, Hindu Dharma, Buddhism and touching on Sikhism. Our curriculum has been designed so that in each unit of work teachers discuss similarities and differences between religions including their practices and beliefs solidifying the importance of respect.

We use the assessment points from the Cumbria Agreed Syllabus to create end of key stage assessment grids for each individual child across our school. We feel this produces a well-rounded assessment covering; Know About and Understand, Express and Communicate and Employ and Gain skills giving a good picture of how their learning is progressing.

We teach our children through a varied curriculum including readings from Holy books, use of iPad apps to research, book work, artefacts, practical drama and role play to ensure we create sessions which inspire and captivate the children’s attention. We feel that a repetitive, spiral of learning approach building on previous learning supports the children to develop not only their knowledge and understanding of religion but how those of who believe feel about their faith.

We have developed a 3 year rolling programme of units that give the children a breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding of Christianity and other major world faiths divided into our 3 class structure. Children in the early years join in with KS1 lessons ensuring Religious Education teaching is inclusive of all children in our school. This approach ensures children right from the very foundation of our school start their RE learning with respect and curiosity.

Furthering our goal for Religious Education at Culgaith to be an ethos not just a stand-alone lesson we include RE in cross curricular lessons e.g. discussing faiths of Tudor kings in History lessons or diary writing from Jesus’ perspective in English sessions.

We are extremely proud of our bespoke curriculum here at Culgaith. We developed it with purpose and understanding of our children here in rural Cumbria. We offer more faiths within each class than suggested by the SACRE, this is intentional as we feel a broad and spiral curriculum gives our children the opportunity to gain core knowledge of the diversity between and within world faiths whilst developing essential core skills of compassion, empathy towards others.

Of the RE taught at least 50% focuses on Christianity whilst the other 50% focusses on other world faiths.