Religious Education

Religious Education is the ‘Core of the Core’ at St Hilda’s and supports through academic enquiry the Christian aims, values, and ethos of the school. The quote from Ephesians 2:20 underpins our mission statement and is expressed through it: We are the St Hilda’s family, with Jesus Christ as our cornerstone. Building on foundations of WISDOM, HOPE, COMMUNITY, DIGNITY, EQUALITY and DIVERSITY, we nurture and support one another to be our very best. We rejoice in our diversity and celebrate our many achievements.

OUR CURRICULUM VISION
OUR IMPLEMENTATION
OUR CURRICULUM OVERVIEW
OUR EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Our Curriculum Vision

Religious Education at St Hilda’s is shaped by our Christian vision and values and our belief that all students should be given the opportunity to flourish.

The drive for excellence and effectiveness in Church Schools is paramount, but not merely because the Government says so. The enabling of every child to flourish in their potential as a child of God, is a sign and expression of the Kingdom and is at the heart of the church’s distinctive mission.” (Chadwick 2012)

‘…the Church of England’s involvement in education… seeks to promote education excellence everywhere for everyone. In Church schools the deeply Christian vision will be seen explicitly in teaching and learning both in RE and across the curriculum’

Church of England’s Vision for Education, Deeply Christian, Serving the Common Good, July 2016

At St Hilda’s CE High School, we believe that delivering high quality Religious Education is the key to enabling every child to flourish. We adapt Illuminating Pathways and other schemes of learning to reflect our school context and to ensure that students experience a broad, balanced and challenging curriculum. Religious Education at St Hilda’s is taught as an academic subject and aims to provide pupils with a thirst for knowledge and the skills to pursue the subject at the highest level. All students are supported to explore and develop a detailed knowledge of the beliefs, values and practices within the Christian faith and other world views including the secular. The department seeks high attainment and significant progress for all students. Our curriculum challenges students to gain new knowledge and to extend and consolidate previous learning.

Our curriculum combines academic rigour with the development of the character and spirit of the student. It encourages and provides students with the opportunities and skills to be curious, to reflect upon and evaluate a variety of answers, with emphasis on the religious, to ask questions about:

– this world and our place in it,

– the ultimate meaning and purpose of life,

– issues or right and wrong,

– self and their relationship to others

– beliefs about God and the possibility of something greater than ourselves.

– and the nature of reality.

A key feature of all Church of England schools and academies should be high quality Religious Education. It is a core academic subject which also bears a major part of the focus on provision for the spiritual development of all pupils.

Framework for Religious Education in Church High Schools and Academies 2018 and 2022.

We aim to live out our status as ‘core of the core’ and demonstrate how we can all encourage pupils to flourish spiritually. It should be noted that while Religious Education is rooted in the message of the Gospel and the living faith of the school, it is not the role of the Religious Education department to evangelise but to encourage the flourishing of ALL pupils.

At St Hilda’s we encourage pupils to grow in fullness and to flourish spiritually. We provide them with an opportunity to think about their own thoughts and feelings and together we endeavour to nurture what spirituality means for the St Hilda’s family.

At St Hilda’s we define spirituality as: “A sense of connection to each other, the world and to something bigger than ourselves. It is our shared search for meaning and appreciation for all that life offers. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that we all share in the St Hilda’s family.”

Religious Education has an important role in preparing students to flourish individually within their communities and collectively as citizens in a plural and global community. Our curriculum inspires students, with the example of inspirational people of faith to be both tolerant and respectful of difference, and the skills to disagree respectfully. Through out KS3 to 5 students encounter examples of social action and are encouraged to be resilient and courageous advocates for change in the World promoting the Christian principles of mutual care, respect and forgiveness. Our Curriculum enables students to encounter Christianity as the religion that influences the lives of millions of people today and to respect and learn from the numerous religious traditions that are followed in Liverpool and the wider world and feel proud of our shared identity.

Our Implementation

It is the duty of the Headteacher and Governing Body to ensure that all pupils at St Hilda’s, a Church of England High School have Religious Education as a core subject area delivered as part of the curriculum. This is required by the 1944 Education Act, Education Reform Act 1988, Statement of Entitlement for RE 2019, the Trust Deed of our school, the demands of Diocesan policy and the traditions of our High School.

As a school within Liverpool Diocese, the provision and delivery of Religious Education is consistent with the recommendations of the Diocese as outlined in The Framework for Religious Education for Church Secondary Schools and Academies 2022. The curriculum offered at each key stage is predominantly Christian, but aspects of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism are studied.

Curriculum Sequencing – A Spiral Curriculum and Ways of Knowing in Religious Education

Religious Education at St Hilda’s has been developed as a well sequenced, spiral curriculum.

It builds systematically upon prior learning and promotes student progress throughout the Key Stages so that their:

knowledge, understanding and evaluation of religious and non-religious worldviews will become deeper, more coherent with greater connections between concepts across year groups and key stages.
understanding of the similarities and differences between and within religious and non-religious worldviews will become erudite over time.
confidence to become increasingly adept in analysing questions raised by religious and non-religious worldviews working with increasingly complex information and a variety of evidence will be developed.
ability to co-ordinate knowledge and values in reaching justified conclusions with evidence will be key in their subject based literacy.

Curriculum time

In order to meet the required standards and quality of Religious Education, The DBE Framework for Religious Education 2022 recommends that:

• Religious Education be taught in each year group across all key stages.

• In Key Stages 3 and 4, between 8-10% of curriculum time be allocated to discrete Religious Education.

• In Years 12 and 13, at least 5% of curriculum time be allocated to discrete Religious Education for all students, in addition to any A level courses studied

Key Stage 3 students have 3 periods of Religious Education each fortnight. At Key Stage 4, students have 4 periods per fortnight in Year 10 and 5 in Year 11. Students studying A Level Religious Studies at Key Stage 5 have 10 periods per fortnight. In addition, Year 12 students have 1 periods of core Religious Education per week for part of the year. Year 13 will also have Core Re from September. Groups are organised into sets from Year 9, with students usually placed based on their most recent assessment grades in Religious Education or English.

Our Curriculum Overview

KS3 Curriculum Overview – To view, please click here.

KS4 Curriculum Overview – To view, please click here.

KS5 A – Level Curriculum Overview – To view, please click here.

KS5 Core RE Curriculum Overview – To view, please click here.

Our Extracurricular Activities

During February half term 40 Year 11 – 13 pupils travelled to Krakow, Poland with the RE and History department.

On day one, we visited the Jewish quarter, Kazimerez and Plazow to see the oldest Jewish synagogue and cemetery in Krakow and sites related to World War II including the ghetto.

On day two we made our pilgrimage to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

On day 3 we returned to the Jewish quarter and spent time at the Galicia museum talking to the son of a Polish professor who was murdered by the Nazis. We then went to the Oscar Schindler factory museum and found out more about the turbulent history of Poland and life during Nazi occupation.