The mission of the department is to help prepare the pupils of St Andrew’s to meet the challenges they will face as they take their place as successful, confident, responsible and effective citizens. To do this, we must endeavour to help them develop socially, vocationally, morally, personally, academically, and spiritually. Furthermore, as a Catholic community we have to try and meet these challenges with faith.
The mission of the Department can perhaps be summed up as a desire to:
To Help Everyone Give Our School’s Pupils Education for Life beyond School.
Everything we do, therefore, as a school community has a contribution to make, and the RE Department sees itself as contributing in a number of ways. The formal curriculum must be developed in such a way as to be both meaningful and worthwhile. The pupils must perceive the time they spend in the RE classroom as a time when they are dealing with ideas and subject matter which is relevant and appropriate to them now, and in their later life, developing skills of enquiry and reflection that can be used now and in the future.
We must aim to deliver the RE curriculum using a variety of methodology and material that will help each individual pupil to fully realise his/her potential in the subject. The whole approach in RE begins from the basis that runs through all of the policies of our school: each and every pupil is worthwhile as an individual person, and as such, the RE curriculum must be tailored, as much as possible, to meet the needs of each individual.
The role of the RE Department is unique in the sense that a large number of the teaching staff may become a member of the Department at one time or another, when they take on the important role of generalist RE teacher and become responsible for the delivery of a specific part of the RE curriculum. It is in this regard that the Mission Statement comes into its own. The RE Department must help each of these generalist teachers to witness to their faith and to approach the teaching of Religious Education with confidence.
Those teachers asked to assume this very important responsibility must feel suitably equipped to teach RE in a way that satisfies the standards which they have set themselves as professionals and that gives the quality of provision that is essential in any subject. This can only be done if the Departmental staff help by providing a clearly defined curriculum, appropriate differentiated materials, suitable resources to support the delivery of this curriculum, appropriate assessment, recording and reporting procedures and worthwhile support and guidance for teachers while they are engaged in the delivery of the curriculum.
The quality and effectiveness of the RE curriculum is also dependent on the support of parents; the work of the Catholic School is such that the parent/teacher partnership is absolutely vital in helping Religious Education to have relevance outwith the classroom. Thus, the Department aims to communicate clearly and regularly with the parents as to what is happening at each stage of the RE syllabus and to encourage their participation as much as is possible.
As the Charter from the Scottish Catholic Education Service would suggest, the purpose of the Catholic School is to develop the whole person. Thus, the school community must be a thriving Christian community, with the obvious presence of all the values and activities of such a community. It is recognised that the development of a community like this has to be a whole-school concern, however the RE Department aims to have a central role in that effort through the provision of extra curricular activities that will heighten the pupils’ awareness of themselves, of others, of the world in which they live and their responsibilities therein. In addition, the Department will seek to develop the spiritual life of the school in close association with the extended Chaplaincy Team, while accepting that the very existence of this spiritual life is a whole-school responsibility and effort.
All these areas, and the people involved, combine to ensure that the RE Department can fulfill its mission and role in the school. The underlying principle has to be that in everything we do is to be found the values of the Church as outlined in the Gospels, and a healthy respect for each and every individual involved – both staff and pupils alike.