At Myton we want all young people to value and demonstrate curiosity about the subject of Worldviews through having access to an ambitious and achievable curriculum, as well as providing learners with authentic experiences in the wider community, that prepares them to make sense of the complex and diverse world in which they live.

It is for this reason we have decided to implement the pioneering Coventry and Warwickshire Locally Agreed Syllabus 2024 at Key Stage 3. This syllabus is pioneering as it is the first in England to apply a Religion and Worldviews approach. This approach has been driven by conversations around the purpose and nature of RE at a national level and through the work of various organisations regarding the religion and worldviews approach to teaching RE. This syllabus also fulfils the requirements for good RE detailed in the 2021 Ofsted RE Research Review.

As part of these changes, we will be moving away from the ‘World Religions Paradigm’ in which religions are presented as fitting tidily into their own neat boxes of beliefs and practices and instead will be recognising and exploring the nuances of worldviews.

A worldview is the way in which a person encounters and interprets the world, understand it and engage with it. Worldviews can change over time. People may be aware of their worldview whereas others may be unaware of their own worldview, what shapes and influences it and how and why it has changed over time. Students will be given the opportunity to acknowledge, explore and interrogate their own worldview as well as encountering the religious and non-religious worldviews of others. We will acknowledge that people can have an significant or minor overlap or alignment with an organised worldview like a religion e.g. Christians who celebrate Christmas but do not attend church.

We are excited to implement a syllabus which makes use of the local context and the rich resources of Coventry and Warwickshire in terms of people, places and history and that also focuses on the diverse lived expression of embodied religion and worldviews.

To better reflect this change, as a department we have decided to change our name from Religious Education to Worldviews.

Just as Science has different disciplines (Biology, Chemistry, Physics) so too does Worldviews:

Theology, Philosophy and Human and Social Sciences.

Students are introduced to these disciplines at the start of Year 7 as well as the skills associated with them and throughout Key Stage 3 these disciplines and disciplinary skills are explicitly referred to and taught, with cross-curricular links highlighted. Skills they will be developing for their future in the wider world (careers) are also explicitly referred to and visually represented each lesson through the use of icons:

Each unit at Key Stage 3 also links with 7 Core Curriculum Concepts, which will also be explicitly referred to. Please see these below.

Students will study elements of familiar organised worldviews such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sanatan Dharma (Hindu), Sikhi and Buddhist traditions, as well as non-religious organised worldviews such as Humanism.

Given the focus on  the local context and the rich resources of Coventry and Warwickshire we will be inviting guest speakers into lessons/special sessions as well as arranging trips to relevant places of interest in the local area.

In Year 7 students have the equivalent of 1 hour a week of worldviews on a two-week timetable.

In Years 8 and 9 students have 3 hours of worldviews across the two-week timetable.

In the words of the esteemed Mary Myatt: “there’s no need to have everything in place for us to get cracking. Sometimes, there’s a reluctance to make a start until all the plans are written up. As long as there’s an overview in place, there’s no need to have all our ducks in a row before we make a start. The likelihood is that we are going to adjust the plans in the light of experience. Beginning, as Churchill said, is half done.”

Creating our curriculum using the new Locally Agreed Syllabus is going to take time and whilst we have an implementation plan, the plan is never more important than the students in front of us. There can be a temptation to plough on regardless, even if something isn’t working and if pupils haven’t truly grasped something. The plans are there to support teaching, not dictate it. If pupils are not learning what we intend, we need to adjust. Curriculum work is a living, breathing process.

Please see below for our current plan for implementing our new syllabus and curriculum.

Good practice in assessment within a progressive curriculum incorporates three main strategies:

These three strategies are used throughout the Worldviews Key Stage 3 Curriculum.

At Myton School students are graded at Key Stage 3 in the following manner:

In Worldviews in Year 7 and Year 8, each of these grades are linked with mastering a particular skill required for post KS3 study of the subject.

In Year 9, the same principle applies but accounts for student progression and preparedness for Key Stage 4 study.

Summative assessments at the end of units are in a ‘test’ format, but each question does not have numerical value. Each question has been designed with the overall disciplinary knowledge and skills we want students to achieve by the end of the topic in mind.  The success criteria descriptors, shared in lesson with students, show what they will need to do to reach that level.

In Worldviews, we support all students to be successful and this is reflected in our assessment strategy in which additional support is given to students with SEND needs.

In recognition of the fact that this is a brand-new syllabus and approach, we appreciate that many local primary schools will not have introduced students to the concept of worldviews. As such, Year 7 will be introduced to this in their first unit What do we mean by worldviews? This unit will develop the basic knowledge, understanding and skills that students will need throughout the rest of Key Stage 3. Students will then apply their newly gained sociological skills in their second unit What is religion and how do we define it? in which students explore the complexities and ‘messiness’ of this thing we call religion. In the third and final unit of Year 7 students will apply their theological skills to the question Why are choosing and being chosen important in Judaism? through examining the stories and different interpretations of the prophets.

Year 7 End Points

Core Disciplines: Human and Social Sciences + Theology

1. Explore and understand what worldviews are and the different lenses involved in their study. (
2. Understand the ‘messiness’ of individual, communal and organised worldviews.
3. Understand that sacred texts can reveal certain truths but can also be interpreted in different ways.

Year 7 by topic and end points

As a department, we knew that our new locally agreed syllabus would have a worldviews approach before it was released. Due to this, our students have already had a grounding in worldviews during Year 7. We have taken into consideration though that they may not have essential prior knowledge of organised (religious) worldviews so they can be successful going into Year 9 and beyond. Due to this we have chosen enquiry units focussing on specific organised worldviews to give students this core knowledge and understanding.

Y8 End Points

Core Disciplines: Theology + Human and Social Sciences + History

1. Understand that religious worldviews have many differences between and within them.
2. Explain how reconciliation, harmony and equality are understood and lived out by different religious worldviews.
3. Explain how sacred texts can be approached differently depending on lenses and denominations and apply sacred texts to range of debated topics within philosophy, ethics and society.
4. Explain how special concepts/principles can be applied to national and global problems.

Year 8 by topic and end point

End point

Apply the lenses of philosophy, theology, and human social science to critical issues within world views and evaluate their effectiveness.