Religious Education

RED: To Know You More Clearly

EYFS to Year 6

The programme of study for Religious Education in Catholic schools presented in this directory has a framework with four structural elements:

• knowledge lenses

• ways of knowing

• expected outcomes

• curriculum branches

Knowledge lenses set out the object of study for pupils; they indicate what should be known by the end of each age-phase. They are referred to as lenses, since they are the things we are looking at and they divide the content of the programme of study into four systematic subsections for the study of Catholicism and two additional lenses for the study of religions and worldviews, which together comprise the six knowledge lenses of:

• hear
• believe
• celebrate and live (the study of the Catholic religion)
• dialogue, and encounter (the study of other religions and worldviews)

Ways of knowing set out the skills that pupils should be developing as they progress through their curriculum journey. Whenever we know something, we always know it in more than one way: we remember it, we critically assimilate it, and we put it into practice. All three are ways of coming to know the things that are the object of our study. The ways of knowing are an evolution of the Age-related Standards in Religious Education, which were themselves an evolution of the Levels of Attainment in Religious Education. The three ways of knowing are:

• understand
• discern
• respond

They are represented in the programme of study by icons:

• head (understand)
• heart (discern)
• hands (respond)

Expected outcomes are a synthesis of the content outlined in the knowledge lenses and the skills described in the ways of knowing. Each age-phase will have a prescribed set of outcomes that will indicate what pupils are expected to know, remember, and be able to do, using the language of the ways of knowing and applying it to the discrete knowledge within each lens.

Curriculum branches are the way this programme of study presents its model curriculum. The model curriculum presents the expected outcomes in six curriculum branches that correspond to the six half-terms of a school year. The model curriculum is rooted in the narrative of salvation history and leads pupils on a journey in each year of schooling that gives a sequence to the learning. As they revisit each branch in each year of school they come to a deeper understanding of its significance for Catholic belief and practice, which allows them to make links between the four knowledge lenses within the context of the narrative of salvation history.

The six curriculum branches are:

• Creation and Covenant
• Prophecy and Promise
• Galilee to Jerusalem
• Desert to Garden
• To the ends of the Earth
• Dialogue and Encounter

For further policies and Curriculum directories, please go to Catholic Life > Teaching of Religious Education.