Religious Education (RE) in the Ashington Learning Partnership aims to support children in learning about and learning from religion, faith and worldviews. RE across the partnership seeks to help children pose, grapple with and form potential answers to deep, complex ethical questions about identity, diversity, morality and purpose. RE supports our whole curriculum offer by providing opportunities to apply the school’s Core Values and by delivering explicit opportunities for children to engage in higher order thinking, making connections between different ideas, whether this is within, between or beyond the religions being studied. 

RE is taught as a rigorous, academic discipline across all key stages with an enquiry approach, which encourages children to explore religion, faith and worldviews with the depth that they warrant. The curriculum content for RE is designed to broaden and deepen children’s understanding and knowledge over time, across and between year groups and key stages. Learning is sequenced progressively to develop understanding of faith and associated communities as well as individual religions. It supports children as they broaden their vocabulary and develop oracy by building opportunities for children to reflect and express their personal resonance with the ideas they study.

Delivering carefully crafted, meaningful RE is a part of our duty to safeguard children as it equips them to become engaged, informed, compassionate citizens, giving them the understanding and skills they need to respond sensitively and thoughtfully to the religious, theological and moral ideas they may encounter in the Ashington community and beyond. RE contributes towards Knowledge, Skills and Understanding Passports. 

High quality RE starts in two-year old provision by giving children a secure framework of understanding around important people and exposure to a range of religious and cultural traditions which is continued throughout EYFS provision through age-appropriate storytelling and role-play. In KS1, this is developed into a robust knowledge of what it means to be committed to a religion and the basic tenets of the world’s major religions. At KS2, knowledge is broadened and deepened to embed a more complex view of religion’s impact on individuals and communities including the challenges that come with having a faith in 21st Century Britain.