At Eastfield Primary School, the purpose of religious education (RE) is to raise the children’s awareness of a variety of religions; teaching the beliefs, cultures and traditions. Religious Education provides avenues for our pupils to understand important things about the world and themselves as individuals. At Eastfield, we deliver RE in order to broaden our children’s horizons. We aim to recognise and celebrate the variation of beliefs we have within our school, and encourage all children to enjoy their celebrations.
We believe in delivering religious education to our students, not religious instruction. We teach children how common themes weave throughout different religions, for example the importance of; truth, sharing and honesty to name a few.
We teach RE through a whole school approach: every year group learns about each main religion. These include: Hinduism, Christianity, Humanism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam and Judaism. A new religion is taught every half term, which leads to a significant festival or celebration for that religion. The children will learn new content every year at Eastfield for each Religion, thus expanding and deepening their knowledge of the world around them.
Within each year group, a ‘big question’ is explored with the children, thus progressing the children’s understanding of content and encouraging philosophical thinking.
Teachers at Eastfield are passionate about delivering RE using resources which the children can physically interact with and where possible, facilitating trips which support the learning of RE.
The whole school RE curriculum for the academic year 2022/23 follows the following plan:
| Term | Religion | Religious Festival / Celebration |
| Autumn 1 | Hinduism | Diwali (24th October) |
| Autumn 2 | Christianity | Christmas ( 25th December) |
| Autumn 2 | Humanism | – |
| Spring 1 | Buddhism | Vesak (16th May) |
| Spring 2 | Sikhism | Holi (7th March) |
| Summer 1 | Islam | Ramadan begins (22nd March)
Eid-ul-Fitr (21st April ) |
| Summer 2 | Judaism | Shavuot (25th May) |
