Religious education (R.E.)

RE at Barnes follows the Richmond Richmond-Upon-Thames SACRE syllabus. At Barnes, teachers promote interfaith understanding by giving children an awareness that they live in a diverse and varied society encompassing many different cultures, faiths and worldviews.  We also strive to promote pupil’s spiritual, moral, cultural and mental development.   

From the Early years all the way to year 6 children are taught the worldwide views of:   

• Christianity  
• Buddhism  
• Hinduism  

• Islam  
• Judaism  
• Sikhism  
• and Humanism.  

At Barnes, we follow the guidance that more weight is given to Christianity to reflect the fact that this belief system is the most dominant in the UK and local area and has historical and national significance. Please find the SACRE syllabus here. 

Through high-quality teaching, teachers develop the following essential characteristics of RE learners through :  

• Knowledge  

facts, understanding and awareness of the major religions and beliefs for individuals, families, communities and cultures. This includes places of worship, religious books and family customs for religious and non-religious people.  

• Skills  

being reflective and thinking about the significance of religious acts, beginning to recognise common aspects between religions and non-religious beliefs. We will often start with a question, for example, why is light important to humans?    

• Personal Development  

personal reflection and spiritual development and we encourage children to respect individuals and communities of different faiths and beliefs to their own.  

Early Years explore RE through whole class teaching and free flow learning:  

• self and others – the similarities and differences between different children and their beliefs  
• celebrations and commemorations – festivals of Christmas, Holi, Diwali, Hanukkah and Easter.   
• symbols and rituals – washing rituals, prayer rituals, fables and places of worship  

• living things – care for the natural world and religious and non-religious attitudes to living things  

In Key Stage One (years 1 and 2) children continue to build their religious knowledge and vocabulary by learning about and from worldwide views in class by art, drama, play, dance and music:  

• looking at key religions, their customs, religious people and key beliefs  
• talking about people and things that are special to them personally  
• hearing religious and non-religious stories  
• learning about religious buildings, religious and non-religious objects and artefacts, symbols, texts, places and important times, days and festivals  
• trips to a church and Japanese gardens and pagoda  

In Key Stage Two (Years 3-6)  children begin to place more emphasis on more detailed factual knowledge and specialist vocabulary about: 

• Significant people, organisations, times for prayer or meditation, religious dress and dietary laws 
• buildings of worship (with visits when possible) and the architecture of religious buildings 
• sacred texts – including the fact that these books give codes and rules for faiths. 
• important dates and festivals (harvest festival performance in Year 3) 
• trips to a Synagogue, Mosque, Mandir and a Gurdwara 

Please find our RE curriculum maps for Early Years to Year 6 here 

Part of the RE curriculum is for schools to offer a daily act of ‘collective worship’.  At Barnes, we usually reflect this as a daily opportunity to reflect on something special or separate from ordinary school activities in order to promote the moral and spiritual welfare of the children.  Collective worship is not religious in its nature but instead calls upon pupils to take a moment to reflect on shared moments of collective interest eg the wonder of nature, the important moral messages within a story or the unique specialness of each and every pupil.  Ordinarily ‘collective worship’, takes place within a whole school assembly, a key stage assembly or a class or ‘tutor group’ gathering. Throughout the year, some key stage assemblies will have a religious focus in which a story from different world religions will be read and reflected upon.  

 Each term, Father Steven (the vicar from St Michael’s Church) leads two assemblies to Key Stage 1 and 2, which have a Christian focus. We also have other visitors from other key organisations and faiths to come and talk about an aspect of their belief.