RE

The RE Department seeks to nurture, develop and enable students’ ability to understand the diverse beliefs and world views found throughout our society. As the horizons of our students are widened, they become equipped with the knowledge and skills to become mature and empathetic individuals, able to face increasingly complex emotional, ethical and social issues in our world.

Importance

RE plays an integral role in the life and health of a school. In a diverse school such as Fernwood, enabling the students to have a broader and deeper understanding of other’s religious and non-religious beliefs is key. Students thrive when they feel comfortable and secure in their surroundings, and one of the keys to this is knowing and understanding those with whom they share the classroom and school environment. It is vital that students are understanding and welcoming to those with beliefs both similar and different to theirs. RE can play a significant role in the development and growth of the students as individuals, as they start to face increasingly more complex emotional and social issues. RE can give students an arena to explore and discuss meaningful issues, alongside developing and investigating their own beliefs and values. This will not only benefit them as individuals, but also our whole school and wider community.

 

Aims of the Curriculum

The aims of the Fernwood Curriculum for RE are to:

• Widen the horizons of our students through providing them with opportunities to learn about and understand a range of religions and ethical world views.
• Encourage respectful and thoughtful expression of ideas and insights into the significant aspects of the human experience which religions address.
• Enrich the cultural capital of our students by providing learning opportunities beyond the classroom.
• Develop interpretation and analysis skills and understand different sources of information and develop a balanced viewpoint
• Enable students to mature morally as they gain a better understand their own and others’ belief systems
• Build lifelong learning skills that will equip students for further studies and the world of work