At St. Joseph’s, we provide a Catholic education based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Children are given the opportunity to fulfil their full potential through a curriculum that develops spiritual, academic, creative, social and emotional growth.

Through our provision we ensure that children leave our school religiously literate and engaged in the world and people around them, filled with knowledge, understanding and skills so that they can reflect spiritually, think ethically and theologically, and who are aware of the demands of religious commitment in everyday life.

The staff team are dedicated to every stage of your child’s development in their faith and through prayer life, vocational awareness, Religious Education lessons, charitable works, and sacramental preparation. We work with your child and family in partnership with the Parish to make sure they grow in God’s love and are prepared to live life to the fullest as Catholics, who have an understanding of their personal and social responsibility and Welsh Values such as faith filled and global citizens of tomorrow.

Why is Religious Education important in Catholic Schools? Religious Education is the ‘core of the core curriculum’ in a Catholic school (Pope St John Paul II)

Placing RE at the core of the curriculum in Catholic schools helps the school to fulfil its mission to educate the whole person in discerning the meaning of their existence, since

‘Religious Education is concerned not only with intellectual knowledge but also includes emotional and affective learning. It is in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of what it is to be human truly becomes clear. Without religious education, pupils would be deprived of an essential element of their formation and personal development, which helps them attain a vital harmony between faith and culture.’ (CES)

Furthermore, religiously literate children and young people are able to engage in a fully informed critique of all knowledge, ‘leading, for example, to an understanding of the relationship between science and religion or history, and between theology, sport and the human body. (CES)

What is the purpose of Religious Education in Catholic schools?

Catholic schools, with RE at their core, exist in order to

‘help parents, priests and teachers to hand on the Deposit of Faith in its fullness to a new generation of young people so that they may come to understand the richness of the Catholic faith, and thereby be drawn into a deeper communion with Christ in his Church.’

With this as their primary aim, Catholic schools serve diverse populations of pupils and within this context the Religious Education Curriculum Directory (RECD) makes the aims of Religious Education explicit:

· To present engagingly a comprehensive content which is the basis of knowledge and understanding of the Catholic faith;

· To enable pupils to deepen their religious and theological understanding and be able to communicate this effectively;

· To present an authentic vision of the Church’s moral and social teaching so that pupils can make a critique of the underlying trends in contemporary culture and society;

· To raise pupils’ awareness of the faith and traditions of other religious communities in order to respect and understand them;

· To develop the critical faculties of pupils so that they can relate their Catholic faith to daily life;

· To stimulate pupils’ imagination and provoke a desire for personal meaning as revealed in the truth of the Catholic faith;

· To enable pupils to relate the knowledge gained through Religious Education to their understanding of other subjects in the curriculum;

· To bring clarity to the relationship between faith and life, and between faith and culture.

Religious Education is a core subject at St. Joseph’s. It is timetabled weekly with 10% of teaching time dedicated to the subject (in line with the Bishops’ Conference recommendations). As a Catholic school, Christianity forms the major focus in RE lessons. RE lessons provide children with a deep understanding of their own faith as well as an awareness of the faith and tradition of other religious communities.

We follow the Religious Education Directory (RED), To Know you More Clearly for Religious Education, however, faith and spirituality is explored throughout the curriculum with Gospel values underpinning all aspects of school life. The RED scheme follows the pattern of: the human Search for meaning, God’s initiative in Revelation and the Response in faith. There are 6 branches within the Religious Education Directory, with one covered each term. They are:

Autumn	Spring	Summer
Branch 1 Creation and Covenant	Branch 3 Galilee to Jersualem	Branch 5 To ends of the earth
Branch 2 Prophecy and Promise	Branch 4 Desert to Garden	Branch 6 Dialogue and Encounter