Mrs P Powell – RE Lead
At Liskeard Hillfort we want to develop well rounded and tolerant young people. We want our children to grow into individuals where they think about the positive benefits of equality and inclusion and to reduce the corrosive effects of ignorance and intolerance. To create a place where people of different faiths and no faith can live side by side, displaying mutual respect, understanding and friendship.
Cornwall has very little ethnic diversity and the children in Hillfort are growing up in area where 98.2% of the population identify as White. Therefore, their exposure to other cultures and beliefs is extremely limited, often leading to a lack of understanding, the risk of prejudice and lack of equality. We feel it is essential that our children are supported in developing mutual respect and understanding and encouraged to grow in confidence to achieve a level of critical awareness that helps them become part of a better society. To fulfil this aim, we use the Sandwell syllabus for RE teaching and ensure that children are immersed in a rich and varied curriculum. In addition to this, we partner with the Plymouth Centre for Cultural Diversity to ensure children are able to access a variety of experiences, visits to places of worship and visitors to deepen their learning experience.
When we study RE at Liskeard Hillfort, we are consciously making links and comparisons between all beliefs. Children experience a high quality curriculum which celebrates diversity and a well-rounded view of religions and cultures from modern Britain. Children will learn to identify the links and similarities between the different religions and practices to ensure mutual respect, understanding and tolerance.
We feel it is essential that our children are supported in developing this mutual respect and understanding and encouraged to grow in confidence to achieve a level of critical awareness that helps them become part of a better society.
This curriculum allows the children to learn the way in which one religion has influenced another. The syllabus develops a coherent understanding of religions by using small step teaching. The individual religions are all introduced in small steps to ensure a knowledge rich curriculum. They are then built upon through knowledge sequencing which leads to units where the knowledge is revisited and combined to allow for comparisons of beliefs.