Staff list
- Mr K Hussain– Assistant Headteacher
- Mrs S Green – Teacher of Humanities
Vision
RS at Cox Green School is aiming to provide students with opportunities to master the knowledge and skills needed to comprehend their own and others world views. People’s beliefs are the foundation of who they are and therefore what they do. RS lessons aim to give students the knowledge and skills to deal with that knowledge of a range of world views both theist and atheist so that they can understand others and themselves better. RS aims to help students understand and engage with the complex world around them. RS develops many transferrable skills from communication, argumentation, critical thinking, analysis, evaluation and empathy.
Intent
In line with the latest OFSTED review and the local SACRE, the curriculum will consider the “substantive knowledge” of a range of world views; give an understanding of the different “Ways of knowing” in RS and allow students to build their own “personal knowledge”. The curriculum will take a thematic and critical approach to theist and atheist world views and critically apply them to different practices as well as philosophical and ethical questions. For example, we will look at The Bible and it’s different types of texts, Buddhism and Suffering and Atheist views on medical ethics topics. We therefore cover the Berkshire Agreed Syllabus key areas of Believing, Behaving and Belonging across theist and atheist world views. This builds a KS3 curriculum that equips students to opt to do RS at GCSE level and follow the AQA syllabus.
The curriculum will highlight current affairs, skills and careers that use what we do in RS lessons to allow students to apply their learning to the wider world. The intent is for students to be more aware of others views and their own and to know where those views come from and the impact they have on people lives.
Implementation
From September 2022 Y7 and Y8 will cover Christianity in depth whilst also doing units in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism. Hinduism will be looked at as a comparison where appropriate. This will be done in a critical manner using textual sources as well as other sources of knowledge and wisdom to develop an understanding and ability to apply key concepts to a range of issues both within and beyond the worldview. For example student will look at the issue of sacrifice as part of Judaism and community as part of Sikhism.
In Y9 students will be introduced to key questions around the nature of religion and other philosophical and ethical topics as part of preparation for the GSCE course. These will be looked at through Christianity and other world views including Buddhism and Humanism thus building on skills and knowledge from Y7 and Y8. Students will also look at atheist views including Humanism and Utilitarianism.
At KS4 students can opt to complete a full course GCSE which will look at Christianity, Islam and Philosophical and Ethical issues around crime, punishment, peace and conflict, families and relationships and medical and environmental ethics. All students, in line with statutory guidelines, will have RS delivered as one feature of their PD programme.
Impact
Outcomes will be measured in end of topic assessments which will be a mixture of multiple choice questions to test knowledge and longer answer questions which test other skills. These will be done in class and in the student’s exercise books. The exercise books should show evidence of a broad and balanced RS curriculum that demonstrates the students’ acquisition of key knowledge and skills.
Students review the agreed successes at the end of every term and are actively encouraged to identify their own target areas, with support from their teachers.
Homework will be regularly given as online form quizzes to consolidate knowledge and understanding. KS4 students will in addition have GCSE practice questions to complete.