Religious studies

The religious studies department has one full time member of staff and one part-time member of staff. Religious education contributes dynamically to children and young people’s education in schools by provoking challenging questions about meaning and purpose in life, beliefs about God, ultimate reality, issues of right and wrong and what it means to be human.  Pupils learn to weigh up the value of wisdom from different sources, to develop and express their insights in response to agree and disagree respectfully.

Pupils develop an aptitude for dialogue so that they can participate positively in our society, with its diverse religions and beliefs. Pupils gain and deploy the skills needed to understand, interpret and evaluate texts, sources of wisdom and authority and other evidence. They learn to articulate clearly and coherently their personal beliefs, ideas, values and experiences, whilst respecting the right of others to have differing opinions. During a pupils’ time at Philips, we strive to make sure pupils visit different places of worship, such as visiting the local church, the local synagogue and a gurdwara.

RE also contributes to pupils’ personal development and well-being and to community cohesion by promoting mutual respect and tolerance in a diverse society. RE can also make important contributions to other parts of the school curriculum such as citizenship, personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE education), the humanities, education for sustainable development and others. It offers opportunities for personal reflection and spiritual development, deepening the understanding of the significance of religion in the lives of others – individually, communally and cross-culturally.

We live in a multicultural, multi ethnic society and religious studies at Philips High School reflects that. Philips High School follows the Bury Agreed Syllabus, which was updated in 2021. All of the units studied through this enable pupils to ‘make sense’ of the religions and non-religious worldviews studied, such as humanism. It ensures that pupils will ‘understand the impact’ of these beliefs in people’s lives and to ‘make connections’ in their own learning and with their wider experience of the world. The principal aim of religious education is to explore what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live, so that pupils can gain the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to handle questions raised by religion and belief, reflecting on their own ideas and ways of living.

Our curriculum is designed thematically based on the Local Agreed Syllabus, which is based on a spiral curriculum so pupils are consistently building upon their knowledge from KS2 and below.  This is to ensure that pupils build carefully upon their knowledge throughout KS3 in order to prepare them for KS4 and beyond.