RE

Our Vision 

In the Religious Education department, our intent is to follow in the footsteps of the words spoken by St. Oscar Romero in which we encourage all pupils to ‘aspire not to have the world but be more for the world’. Our mission is to foster a love of religious studies and a passion to be an effective citizen of God’s creation by interweaving our ASPIRE values and Catholic Social Teaching principles throughout the RE curriculum. We endeavour to nurture religious literate pupils who will engage in ethical and moral thinking and who are unafraid to interrogate their own faith and are at ease with exploring the beliefs of others. We know the responsibility of living in a multi-faith and multicultural society. We therefore aim to incorporate fundamental British Values within our teaching and learning where intolerance, prejudice and discrimination is challenged, recognising the human person as one ‘created in “the image and likeness” of God’.  

At KS3, the RE department follows the national framework, ‘To Know You More Clearly’, which is mapped against the Religious Education Curriculum Directory (3-19) for Catholic Schools and Colleges (RED) which is designed to enrich the spiritual and moral development of children to be implemented in all Catholics schools by 2025.  

There are six themes within the RE KS3 curriculum that are taught and developed each year enabling or pupils to gain a depth of knowledge and understanding of the Roman Catholic faith and other world religions.

These are: 

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

Key Stage 4 Religious Education- Eduqas Specification B GCSE  

As Religious Education is a core subject here at St Thomas More’- all pupils will complete a GCSE within the subject.  

The exam consists of the following components, which each have their own exam at the end of Year 11:  

  • Component One: Foundational Catholic Theology 
  • Component Two: Applied Catholic Theology 
  • Component Three: Judaism- beliefs, teachings and practises 

ALL our pupils can access the thematic content of the RE/RS curriculum, which is age appropriate. This is achieved by our consistent approach to pedagogy and practice that we operate across the school. This includes: 

  • Homework being set weekly to encourage deeper understanding of core knowledge, independence and resilience in overcoming challenges.  
  • Adaptive Teaching to ensure pupils receive a well-rounded education and the curriculum is accessible to all.  
  • All pupils start their lessons with a ‘Do It Now’ activity in which memory retrieval is prioritised not only from the pre-ceding lesson, but from previous topics. 
  • ‘No opt out’ ensures all pupils are effectively and prior learning is built upon.  
  • A culture of reading subject related content is embedded into the learning in which tier 1,2 and 3 vocabulary is regularly used, allowing pupils to express information more fluently.  
  • ‘I, We, You’ – (modelling and sharing good practice) – exemplar work is regularly shared so pupils know what a good answers looks like.  
  • Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time – There is regular assessment to inform teacher planning, and a variety of feedback methods are used to secure progress.  

By encouraging a curriculum which promotes our school mission and values pupils are given the opportunity to understand what it means to be a local, national and international Catholic citizen. As such, they will have developed a moral dimension to their lives and an authentic faith in which they can contribute to a just and more peaceful society.