Ms E Bridgman BA Hons  Head of Department
Ms A Douglas BA Hons

About Religion & Philosophy

Religion and Philosophy deals with the 'deeper' issues of life and helps pupils become more thinking, sensitive yet critical individuals. As such it has a fundamental role to play in creating the individuals who will be part of future societies.

We combine the study of beliefs and practices in world religions with more speculative work on religious ideas, and ethical considerations.  So, whilst the subject is a rigorous academic study, it also deals with personal, spiritual and moral questions that face all human beings.

We seek to engender mutual tolerance, understanding, openness and an appreciation of diversity.  We are lucky to have a diversity of faiths within the schools and we find that lessons about particular faiths are greatly enhanced when pupils are able to bring their own experiences and understanding.

Religion and Philosophy never seeks to preach but aims to facilitate students to develop to their own informed opinions. 

Our Aims

• To enable students to ‘learn about religion’ and ‘learn from religion’
• To make pupils become thinking, knowledgeable, questioning, sensitive and tolerant individuals.
• To enable pupils to apply the insights gained in Rand P to their own lives and concerns.
• To encourage personal reflection on religious and ethical issues
• To develop in the pupils skills to live within this community with understanding and tolerance
• To encourage students to consider themselves as part of a global community and to understand something of that community’s rich diversity of belief and culture
• To enable pupils to develop a sense of their own worth, identity and value, in the classroom, school and community.

Our objectives are to:

• To provide a basic knowledge of Christianity.
• To provide a basic knowledge of world religions and mankind's search for meaning.
• To enable pupils to appreciate the impact that religions have had on our ways of thinking, our morality, our society and the world we live in.
• To enable pupils to appreciate that religious questions are vital to the world and the lives of many people in the world.
• To enable pupils to understand that religious and spiritual thought can be vital to an individual's personal search for meaning in life.
• To enable pupils to find ways of expressing insights gained from Rand P and to creatively express their responses to these insights.
• To offer a variety of teaching and learning styles and experiences to enable students of all abilities and learning preferences to achieve their potential in the subject.

Skills to engender

• Investigate – gather and select information, ask relevant questions, know what is appropriate
• Interpret – Draw and suggest meaning from artefacts, poems etc; interpret religious language
• Reflect – ponder feelings, experience, ultimate questions etc.; articulate ideas carefully
• Empathise – consider the thoughts and experience of others, see others’ perspectives, develop the power of the imagination to identify feelings such as love, sorrow, forgiveness
• Analyse – identify essential ideas and distinguish between opinion, fact and belief; recognise similarities and differences
• Synthesise – link key ideas together in a coherent pattern; make links between religion and human experience.
• Expression – explain concepts; identify and articulate matters of deep concern by a variety of means (not just verbal); respond to religious issues
• Application – apply their learning to a new situation
• Evaluate – draw conclusions; weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of an idea; debate issues to come to a balanced conclusion
• Speculate – pursue a theoretical line of thinking beyond the basic given material.
• Metacognition – reflect on how ideas and learning has come about so that the individual learner can learn to learn!

Years 7 - 9

Years 10-11 curriculum

• The Religious Studies GCSE is not compulsory for students, but all students are encouraged to consider taking it as an option.
• The course is divided into two areas: Philosophy and Ethics.  Each contains five modules.
• The course is studied mostly from the perspective of Christianity. However students may choose to work on their own religion for coursework.

Year 10 NEW GCSE 

Unit B601: Philosophy 1 (Deity, Religious and Spiritual Experience, End of Life)                       

• Belief about deity                      
•  Religious and spiritual experience                        
• The end of life

Unit B602: Philosophy 2 (Good and Evil, Revelation, Science)                      

•  Good and evil                       
•  Religion, reason and revelation                        
•  Religion and science

Unit B603: Ethics 1 (Relationships, Medical Ethics, Poverty and Wealth)                       

• Religion and human relationships                        
• Religion and medical ethics                        
•  Religion, poverty and wealth

Unit B604: Ethics 2 (Peace and Justice, Equality, Media)                        

• Religion, peace and justice                        
•  Religion and equality

•  Religion and the media

In the new GCSE (beginning teaching September 2009) there is no coursework.  There is also the option of completing some of the modules before the final examination session at the end of Year 11.

Year 11 - Legacy Course: GCSE OCR syllabus B Philosophy of Religion and Ethics

• Philosophy:
• The Nature of God
• The Nature of Belief
• Religion and Science *
• Death and the Afterlife
• Good and Evil

• Ethics:
• Religion and Human Relationships
• Religion and Medical Ethics
• Religion and Equality *
• Religion, Poverty and Wealth
• Religion, Peace and Justice

*Coursework section:

• Coursework is completed for Philosophy in the Spring Term of Year 10.
• The Ethics coursework is completed in the Autumn term of Year 11.

For further exam board information please click here.

Post 16 curriculum

Admission

All students are encouraged to consider Philosophy and Ethics for AS/2.  There is no requirement that the student has followed GCSE in order to take up the subject at AS/2 and often there is at least one student who chooses to do this.

AS/A2 OCR Religious Studies – Philosophy of Religion and Ethics.

• The AS and A2 consist of two modules: Philosophy of Religion and Ethics
• Each module is assesses at each level by a 11/2  hour examinations. 

Philosophy of Religion 1 (AS):

• The debates of Plato and Aristotle
• Jewish and Christian ideas about God
• Arguments for and against the existence of God
• The challenge of evil to religious belief
• Religion and science 

Religious Ethics 1 (AS):

• Ethical Theory: Moral Relativism, Natural Law, The Categorical Imperative (Kant), Utilitarianism (Bentham & Mill), the concepts of absolute and relative morality
• Religious Ethics
• Practical Ethics: the theory of and responses to medical ethics – abortion, euthanasia, the right to life, genetic engineering and embryo research; the ethics of war 

Philosophy of Religion 2 (A2):

• Life and death and the soul: body and soul, resurrection and rebirth, the nature of disembodied existence, concepts of heaven and hell
• Religious language: the ‘via negativa’, verification and falsification principles, language games, the use of symbol, analogy and myth
• Religious Experience; Miracles; Revelation of Scripture
• The Attributes of God

Religious Ethics 2 (A2):

• Virtue Ethics
• Metaethics
• Free will and determinism
• The nature and role of conscience: Aquinas, Butler, Freud, Newman, Piaget
• Religious ethics (theory and practice) of one chosen religion
• Practical Ethics: religious ethics applied to the environment, business ethics, sex and relationships

For more detailed information from the exam board please click here.