The Vision

This project was born out of a response to Ofsted Reports and the Church of England’s ‘Making a Difference?’ report which recognised opportunities to develop and enhance the quality of teaching about Christianity in both church and community schools.

Why Understanding Christianity?
This resource responds to the challenge of raising standards of achievement in teaching and learning about Christianity in several ways:

1. It starts by reducing the content covered, focusing on a small number of core concepts in order to enable a deeper understanding by pupils.
2. It ensures coherence by selecting core concepts which reflect a view of biblical Christianity as following a salvation narrative.
3. It uses a ‘spiral’ curriculum, where pupils revisit these core concepts in different contexts as they move through the school. These varied encounters deepen pupils’ understanding of the meaning of these concepts within the overall ‘big story’ of the Bible.
4. It explores ways in which belief in the core concepts has an impact on the diverse Christian community and on the individual lives of Christians.
5. It weaves in opportunities for pupils to reflect upon these ideas in relation to their understanding of religion and belief, including their own responses.

In this way, this resource offers a coherent approach to teaching about Christianity, so that pupils’ classroom encounters with Christian belief and practice is set in a wider context, deepening their learning and helping them to make connections between concepts, texts, practices and their learning in RE more broadly.