What is the Value of Religious Education?

Religious Studies provides students an opportunity to connect their real-world experience with the big questions of today like:

• Where did we come from?
• What is the meaning of life?
• How can I be a ‘good’ person?

Although the subject is called ‘Religious Studies,’ this titling is more in keeping with tradition as—at KSA—we take a religions and worldviews approach to the curriculum where students learn both religious and nonreligious worldviews. As students move through the curriculum they learn about belief systems that might be similar or different to their own, and they are encouraged to discuss and debate the value of these ideas so that they can better understand them. This experience enables students to formulate their own perspectives as they learn to understand their own worldview.

In Year 7, this starts by understanding where the United Kingdom started religiously then how the country changed and adapted throughout time. In Year 8, students engage with the ‘Big Questions’ about life whilst applying their learning from Year 7 alongside the new worldviews studied in Year 8. In Year 9, students complete their learning by considering how philosophy and ethics affect human lives on a day-to-day basis, including how this will shape our world in the future.

How do we study Religions & Worldviews?

To understand different worldviews, several ‘lenses’ are used. These lenses are the personal, theological, philosophical, and sociological. Each are used in order to develop student’s skills in religious literacy, which is a student’s ability to understand and engage with another person’s beliefs and ideas. For example, the death penalty could be viewed from multiple perspectives:

• The personal lens might help students understand their own ideas about the value of life
• The theological lens could use religious texts like the Ten Commandments to understand how this might affect someone’s attitude towards the death penalty
• The philosophical lens might consider the meaning of life or importance of the law when applying the death penalty
• Finally, the sociological lens might look to data to evidence and the historical use of the death, plus why attitudes towards it have changed

Used together, these lenses help students become stronger in their religious literacy as they consider and critique multiple beliefs, both religious and nonreligious. This, in turn, helps students improve in other subjects as well because one of the key masteries in Religious Studies is ‘argumentation’ where students engage with a topic in an academic debate, building their arguments through reasoning and justification. This skill is transferable to other subjects like History, English, and even Science.

Ultimately, Religious Studies is about enabling pupils to become free thinking, critical participants of public discourse, who can make academically informed judgements about the many complex moral and social issues which shape the global landscape.

Topics taught are as follows:

Year 7

Religions & Beliefs

Paganism

Christianity

Secularism & Nonreligious Worldviews

Year 8

Evil & Suffering

The Dharmic Faiths: Hinduism & Buddhism

Narratives of Holy Texts

Origins of the World

Reincarnation Vs Afterlife

Stewardship

Inspirational Figures

Year 9

Morality & Ethics

Ethics & Technology

Ethics & Medicine

Human Rights & Social Justice

KS4 – AQA Specification

• Christianity: Beliefs & Practices
• Buddhism: Beliefs & Practices
• Themes - Relationships and Families; Life Issues; Peace and Conflict; Crime and Punishment; Human Rights and Social Justice

KS5 – OCR Specification

• Philosophy
• Ethics
• Christian Thought

For more detailed information of the core content covered in this subject for each year group, please access the Knowledge Organisers here:

Key Stage 3 (Years 7, 8 and 9) 
Key Stage 4 (Years 10 and 11)