Religious Education
Religious Education at Thornton Primary School
“The purpose of all religious traditions is to create temples of goodness and compassion inside our hearts.”
Dalai Lama
Through the Religious Education curriculum at Thornton, we set out to help children develop a positive and tolerant attitude towards other people, respecting their right to hold beliefs that are different to their own.
We believe that Religious Education plays a crucial role in promoting the spiritual, moral; social and cultural development of our children. It aids our children to cultivate a greater understanding of themselves and an awareness of those around them. The majority of children who attend our school are Muslim, so it is crucial that they gain knowledge about other faiths. By exposing our children to beliefs that are different to their own, it gives them opportunities to identify differences as well as similarities between faiths. The children may not have the opportunity to do this anywhere else. We hope that this will provide our children with the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive with the challenges of life in modern British society.
Further intentions of our Religious Education curriculum are to:
- Enable our children to distinguish right from wrong, taking into account their own beliefs but also that of civil and criminal law of England.
- Encourage our children to understand and accept what it means to be responsible for our own behaviour.
- Developing language skills to help children deepen their understanding further and improve their ability to communicate.
- Ensure our children acquire knowledge and develop a broad understanding of the main religions represented in Great Britain: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism.
Our curriculum has been carefully designed and planned in order to create connections with prior learning. This enables our children to gain a deeper appreciation of each faith as they progress through each year group. We aim to move the nature of children’s thinking to a higher order deep level understanding, rather than just acquiring new facts, through asking key questions and pondering moral dilemmas which encourages reflection.
A conscious effort is made to ensure children engage in a range of learning experiences which are challenging, fun, meaningful and where possible relate to real life. Also incorporated into our curriculum are trips which help to develop the children’s understanding. By the time our pupils reach year 6 they will have had the opportunity to visit a range of places of worship including; a local church, Birmingham Central Mosque, a Buddhist Temple and a Hindu Temple.