Religious Education
At the Hayes, we welcome and celebrate diversity in all forms. In our RE curriculum, we work hard to ensure that all our children feel included and are nurtured to be global citizens with an enriched education of a wide range religions and cultures. To do this, we have chosen to use Croydon's agreed syllabus for Religious Education (updated 2018).
Our principle aim of Religious Education is to enable all pupil to understand and reflect upon the religious and spiritual beliefs, practices, insights and experiences that are expressed in humanity’s search for meaning in life. We also aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to explore and express their own responses and personal beliefs.
Religious Education promotes our pupils’ understanding of the multicultural and multi faith society that we live in today by enabling them to explore issues of belief and issues between faiths. By experiencing learning about different faiths and beliefs, pupils are then encouraged to understand how we can interact with each other and explore tolerance and respect for all and to celebrate our British Values in this way.
Our curriculum is organised into 4 different themes: Authority and Worship, Sacred and Inspirational writings, Lifestyle and Celebrations and Challenging units.
In Key Stage 1, the religions that we focus on are: Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism.
In Key Stage 2, the religions that we focus on in more detail are Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.
In Early Years, the RE curriculum is interwoven into the curriculum in 3 topics:
*Festivals and celebrations (Hinduism – Diwali and Christianity – Christmas),
*Growing together (Buddhism – Wesak, Christianity – Easter and Chinese New Year)
*Caring and Taking Care (Hinduism Raksha Bandhan and Islam – Eid).
Please see our RE Overview for more details.
At The Hayes we aim to reflect the faiths and beliefs of the school community through our Challenging Units, these include:
Year 1: Why are we Thankful?
Year 2: Why are some things special?
Year 3: Why should we care for our world?
Year 4: Why do you judge me?
Year 5: Journeys of life
Year 6: The importance of pilgrimage
Assessment of RE is completed through the teacher’s understanding of pupils’ knowledge. This is supported through evidence from children’s individual books, photographs, records of class discussions/debates (teacher notes on pupil’s comments, flip charts), group outcomes, class displays and teacher notes on pupils’ comments.
At The Hayes, we hope that through experiencing our RE curriculum, children will develop an understanding of commitment and understanding how to live life through a set of values; open mindedness and being able to listen to others views without prejudice; respect for their own and others’ beliefs and traditions; a sense of self-esteem and self-respect and understanding that everyone is unique and finally appreciation and wonder for the world and how there are many different views and ideas for the meaning of life.