Religious Education

At the Ridgeway School, RE is taught across all age phases, taking account of pupils’ cognitive ability, chronological age and cultural background. We follow the Surrey Agreed Syllabus, ensuring that our delivery is creative, motivating, meaningful, engaging and relevant to the pupils, depending on their individual needs and the targets we are working towards. 

 We feel that it helps to use a combination of approaches, to appeal to the different learning styles of the pupils.  RE works well with our “Thinking Skills” curriculum which encourages independent learning.  Communication is core to everything we teach at Ridgeway and is taught discreetly in RE. We encourage “active” sessions throughout the curriculum, this is both to support hands on/doing learning, as well as practical and meaningful experience and engagement. 

We feel that it is beneficial to use a combination of approaches, including the use of artefacts, the celebration of festivals, the exploration of different food and clothing, appreciation and respect of special items such as Holy books, etc.

We recognise the benefits of cross curricular working, such as links with English, History, Geography, PSHE, etc. Through the teaching of RE we can also focus on the development of skills such as communication, literacy and an appreciation of other cultures, beliefs and diversity.

RE provides opportunities to develop our own ‘Thinking Skills’ curriculum and also to promote Social, Moral, Spiritual, Cultural and our own school values.

We realise the importance of engagement (attention and focus) and we acknowledge that deeper learning can only occur when pupils are fully engaged and have resources matched to their personal learning styles.

RE sits with the Humanities Faculty and once a year there is a Humanities Curriculum Focus Week with a specific focus and theme.

We invite parents to be involved with their child’s religious education by sending in photographs of family celebrations, their own places of worship and anything that is meaningful to the child.

We visit our local church 3 times a year for Harvest Festival, Christmas carol service and an Easter service. We have an act of collective worship or reflection each day and a whole school ‘Special Mention’ assembly at the end of the week.