Religious Studies Subject Overview

It is our intent for the Religious Education element of our Academy curriculum to engage, inspire, challenge and encourage students, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to answer challenging questions about the world around them. Religious Education is the “core of the core curriculum” (Pope St John Paul II) at St Mary’s Catholic Academy. Our mission is to educate the whole person in discerning the meaning of their existence. Religious Education is concerned with more than just intellectual knowledge as it includes emotional learning. It is through Religious Education that students are able to consider what it means to be truly human. Religious Education affords students the opportunity to attain harmony between faith and culture. Students will be able to deepen their understanding of God as encountered and taught by Christians. The teaching of Religious Education makes links between the beliefs, practices and value systems of a range of faiths and world-views studied. The Religious Education curriculum will help to develop responsibility and respect for all aspects of diversity, whether it be social, cultural and religious, and prepare students well for life in modern Britain.

The Catholic Education Service makes the purpose of Religious Education in our Catholic Academy clear. Our primary aim is to “help parents, priests and teachers to hand on the Deposit of Faith in its fullness to a new generation of young people so that they may come to understand the richness of the Catholic faith, and thereby be drawn into a deeper communion with Christ in his Church.” (Religious Education Curriculum Directory).

The Religious Education Curriculum Directory (RECD) makes the aims of Religious Education explicit:

1. To present engagingly a comprehensive content which is the basis of knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith.
2. To enable students continually to deepen their religious and theological understanding and be able to communicate this effectively.
3. To present an authentic vision of the Church’s moral and social teaching so that students can make a critique of the underlying trends in contemporary culture and society.
4. To raise pupils’ awareness of the faith and traditions of other religious communities in order to respect and understand them.
5. To develop the critical faculties of pupils so that they can relate their Catholic faith to daily life.
6. To stimulate pupils’ imagination and provoke a desire for personal meaning as revealed in the truth of the Catholic faith.
7. To enable students to relate the knowledge gained through Religious Education to their understanding of other subjects in the curriculum.
8. To bring clarity to the relationship between faith and life and between faith and culture.

The outcome of excellent Religious Education is religiously literate and engaged young people who have the knowledge, understanding and skills – appropriate to their age and capacity – to reflect spiritually and think ethically and theologically, and who are aware of the demands of religious commitment in everyday life (Religious Education Curriculum Directory).