Religious Education

During year 10 all students study Religious Studies for one lesson per week. The course is started in year 9 and all students are entered for the Short Course exam in the Summer of their year 10. This results in an award of ½ a GCSE.

The Short Course will continue to study Christianity in depth and will also address aspects of Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and Buddhism in further detail. The course explores Religion and Life Issues – namely Love, Sex and Marriage, Identity & Belonging, Prejudice and Discrimination, God and Life after death.

Grading for the course is 100% examination and no coursework is involved.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES PREFERENCE (Religious Studies and History)

Students also have the opportunity to express a preference to turn their half GCSE to a full GCSE in Religious Studies.

To present this we have combined Religious Studies with a short course History. The available five hours per cycle will be divided between the two subjects. We believe this provides an excellent opportunity for some students to broaden their experience in the learning area of Humanities.

This top up course explores Religion and Human Experience and deals with ethical and philosophical questions like What is Truth?, Is abortion / cloning / genetic engineering acceptable?, Should war ever be encouraged?, Can suffering have a purpose? and Is capital punishment a good thing?

For details on the history component of the combined course please refer to the History section.