Our RE Curriculum

At Hill View Junior Academy, we aim for children to GROW, allowing children to have the experiences of Gratitude, Resilience, Opportunity and Wonder. When Religious Education is planned for and taught these drivers are our focus.

Religious Education is an essential element of the curriculum and contributes to the personal and intellectual development of children and young people. Our syllabus will help them to develop an understanding of the religious traditions and worldviews represented in society today, preparing them to encounter the diversity of beliefs and values present locally, nationally and globally.

 “Every Religion has its dignity… in freedom of expression there are no limits.”

Pope Francis

The Agreed Religious Education Syllabus for Sunderland states:

Throughout the key stages, pupils should increasingly have opportunities to develop a range of skills that are essential for them to learn and make progress in Religious Education; these can be developed through the three elements of RE in this syllabus: Knowledge and Understanding of Religion, Critical Thinking, and Personal Reflection.

The legal requirements for teaching Religious Education were set out in the Education Act 1988 and confirmed by the Education Acts of 1996 and School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Parents have the right to withdraw their children from all or part of Religious Education lessons.

At Hill View Junior Academy, we adopted the locally agreed syllabus for Religious Education along with the NATRE schemes of learning, and National Curriculum guidance from January 2024 (with the transition period for full teaching of the new syllabus to be in place, for all year groups, by autumn term 2024). Our syllabus contains unit outlines for all year groups from Year 3 through to Year 6; each of the units are designed to be taught over a half term period in a weekly RE lesson.

To ensure that we meet the legal requirement to ‘reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian whilst taking account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain’ (Education Act 1996) and also to include non-religious worldviews that are represented in the syllabus by two units on Humanism and one on Atheism (High Court judgement 2015), our RE curriculum is skills and knowledge based, and is progressive from year group to year group. Within the RE curriculum, we also have thematic units (units which do not focus exclusively on one religion or non-religious worldview). For example, ‘How and why do people mark the significant events of life?’

Cross curricular links are encouraged where possible within our broad and balanced curriculum and considerations are given to those children who require additional support or who are on the SEND register, to ensure all learning is accessible and in line with the school’s inclusion policy.