Understanding Faith

At North Borough Junior School we believe that the purpose of Religious Education is to explore big questions about life and to find out what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live. By doing this, our pupils can develop the understanding and skills needed to make sense of religion as well as reflecting on their own ideas and ways of living. We therefore have adopted a new title for our Religious Education and use the term ‘Understanding Faith’.

Our Understanding Faith curriculum follows the Kent Agreed Syllabus and aims to ensure that all pupils:

  1. Know about and understand a range of religions and worldviews.
  2. Express ideas and insights about the nature, significance and impact of religions and worldviews.
  3. Gain and deploy the skills needed to engage seriously with religions and worldviews.  

In order for children to achieve these by the end of KS2 we follow a syllabus based around a key question approach. Every year group has 4/5 key questions to study over the year and these questions open up the content to be studied, allowing teachers to meet the needs of pupils in their classes as well as ensuring progression throughout the key stage. The curriculum also reflects the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian but also takes into account the teaching and practices of other principal religions represented in Great Britain. These include learning about Hindus, Muslims and Jewish people. Furthermore, children from families where non-religious worldviews are held are represented in most of our classrooms so we also include teaching and learning of non-religious world views including Humanism.

In order to deliver the aims of the curriculum, we allocate sufficient time to the subject based on the guidance of 45 hours per year, however we are flexible in our allocation of time and this may vary from 1 hour weekly lessons to themed days or weeks.

Miss Pailing (Understanding Faith Subject Leader)

Understanding Faith Skills Progression Document