RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
INTENT:
At St. Joseph’s our RE curriculum enables children to lead your child to a closer relationship with Jesus Christ.
Vision statement
We expect everyone at St Joseph’s to demonstrate ‘Living, Learning and Loving together with Christ’ in a safe, welcoming and nurturing environment. We live, learn, work and serve together in communion with our whole community, to grow in God’s way and be witnesses to our faith so as to build God’s Kingdom here in Benwell.
Intent
At St Joseph’s we follow the aims of Religious Education as stated in the RE Curriculum Directory which are:
To present engagingly a comprehensive content which is the basis of knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith.
To enable pupils continually to deepen their religious and theological understanding and be able to communicate this effectively.
To present an authentic vision of the Church’s moral and social teaching so that pupils can make a critique of the underlying trends in contemporary culture and society.
To raise pupils’ awareness of the faith and traditions of other religious communities in order to respect and understand them.
To develop the critical faculties of pupils so that they can relate their Catholic faith to daily life.
To stimulate pupils’ imagination and provoke a desire for personal meaning as revealed in the truth of the Catholic faith.
To enable pupils to relate the knowledge gained through Religious Education to their understanding of other subjects in the curriculum.
To bring clarity to the relationship between faith and life, and between faith and culture.
Our beliefs
Catholic Social Teaching is deeply embedded in the mission and values of St Jospeh’s School. Catholic Social Teaching emphasizes the dignity of the human person, the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the preferential option for the poor. At St Joseph’s this is rooted in both the curriculum and the culture of the school, shaping the environment where children learn not only academic knowledge but also moral and social responsibility. We believe that the children learn best from example and therefore we strive to live out the Gospel values with Christian principles and ideals permeating the whole curriculum and living out the school mission statement.
IMPLEMENTATION:
TThe Religious Education curriculum at St Jospeh’s, which is based on the Religious Education Directory, To Know You More Clearly is called The Way.
The Way is an online platform that provides high-quality resources to support the delivery of this new curriculum, which has been implemented across all primary schools in the Diocese from September 2026.
As a Catholic school, we recognise that parents are the first and most important educators of their children in faith. This programme has been designed to work in partnership with families, supporting children as they grow in their knowledge, understanding, and relationship with God. We look forward to sharing this exciting journey with our school community.
The outcome of Religious Education:
'The outcome of Religious Education is religiously literate and consciously 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 recognise the demands of religious commitment in everyday life. ' (RED, To know you more clearly')
The Curriculum
This curriculum follows the Religious Education Directory (RED) and is built around six half-termly branches. Rather than rote learning, the programme is designed to help children Hear the Word, Believe, Celebrate,and Live out the Gospel in their daily lives. It encourages our pupils to be curious, ask big questions, and develop a deep, enduring relationship with God.
Branches and Lenses
There are six branches in ‘To know You More Clearly’ – one per half term. The branches are:
Autumn 1: Creation and Covenant
Autumn 2: Prophecy and Promise
Spring 1: Galilee to Jerusalem
Spring 2: Desert to Garden
Summer 1: To the ends of the Earth
Summer 2: Dialogue and Encounter
Ways of Knowing
The ways of knowing describe the skills that pupils develop as they progress though the religious education curriculum.
These are:
Understand: Gaining deep comprehension of texts and practices
Discern: Evaluating meaning, truth, beauty, and implications
Respond: Reflecting and responding personally and contextually
Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education
At St Joseph’s we use the ‘Life to the Full Programme’ which is a fully resources scheme of work taken from Ten Ten Resources. We use this to teach Relationships and Health Education (RHE) for Catholic primary schools. It is taught with a spiral approach to learning in which pupils will revisit the same topics at an age-appropriate stage through their school life. Our Mission Statement commits us to the education of the whole child (spiritual, physical, intellectual, moral, social, cultural, emotional) and we believe that Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education is an integral part of this education. Furthermore, our school aims state that we will endeavour to raise pupils’ self-esteem, help them to grow in knowledge and understanding, recognise the value of all persons and develop caring and sensitive attitudes.
IMPACT:
The impact of St Joseph’s is measured through Age Related Standards and monitored internally through in house moderation as well as diocesan moderation and meetings with schools from our Trust.
The impact of RE at St Joseph’s is to provide the children with a Catholic education, which perceives life as a faith journey in the everyday Catholic life of the school as well as bringing this to the outside world. We also ensure that the teaching is inspired by the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.