St. Urban's Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy

Religious Education

Rationale of Religious Education:

• The primary purpose of Catholic Religious Education is to come to know and understand God’s revelation which is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. In the person of Christ, the deepest meaning of what it is to be human — that we are created by God and through the Holy Spirit united with Christ in his Incarnation — is discovered. This revelation is known through the scriptures and the tradition of the Church as taught by the Magisterium. Religious Education helps the pupil to know and experience the meaning of this revelation in his or her own life and the life of the community which is the Church.
• Religious Education is a core subject in the Catholic school.
• For some in the classroom, Religious Education may well be received as catechesis, deepening and enhancing their personal faith; for some it will be evangelisation, the first time they will have been presented, personally, with the truths of living faith. Nevertheless, its primary purpose is the step by step study of the mystery of Christ, the teaching of the Church and its application in daily life. The criteria by which it is to be judged are educational.
• Religious Education is planned, taught, assessed and monitored with the same rigour as other core curriculum subjects.

The outcome of 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.

 

The Aims of Religious Education

 1      To present a comprehensive content which engages pupils and is the basis of knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith;

2       To enable pupils 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 pupils 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 pupils 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.