3rd April 2025
School News
Laura Newell, Headteacher at St Nicholas CofE Primary, Alcester writes:
“We are absolutely thrilled to announce that our school has been awarded the Platinum OPAL Award for outstanding play opportunities! Putting us in the top 2% of the country!
This incredible achievement is a testament to the hard work, dedication, and passion of our staff, children and wider school community. Through teamwork and commitment, we have transformed playtimes, ensuring our children enjoy high-quality, inclusive, and imaginative play every day.”
Spring Term Pupil Voice – What Pupils Told Us…
A big thank you to the schools that contributed to the DBE pupil voice exercise using the easy ‘smart school council’ link. Back in January the DBE asked the question:
The Bible says Jesus came to give us ‘life in all its fullness’ – what does ‘living your best life’ mean to you?
These were the voting results from both primary and secondary groups:
- Being rich and famous – 0 votes
- Health and happiness – 3 votes
- Having nice family, friends and pets – 5 votes
- Having God in your life – 9 votes – the winning vote
- Being happy with who you are – 5 votes
Additional longer answers from pupil groups were:
For RE Leads…
A Good News Story for RE and the New Syllabus!
Jen Jenkins writes, “I love this email I received from an RE lead in one of our schools on Monday. There was a child in Year 6 that was poorly and was sent home just before lunch (something unheard of at this time of year – as I’m sure you know!) just after lunch his teacher was surprised to see that he had insisted that he return to school after having some calpol because he ‘couldn’t miss RE’ that afternoon!”
Response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review Interim Report on RE
Jen Jenkins has written a reflective response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review Interim Report in terms of Religious Education and the very recent implementation of the new Religion and Worldviews syllabus.
Mapping Disciplinary Knowledge and Skills in your RE Curriculum
You may have noticed Jen mentioned a new set of resources to help you in mapping disciplinary knowledge and skills as pupils develop these throughout the syllabus. The resources are designed to help you with assessment. There is an overview plus the mapping document, as well as a template for creating unit overviews for units in your RE curriculum (plus an example). We hope you find these helpful.
You can find both of these items on the resources section of the DBE website under ‘New Agreed Syllabus – CofE School Specific’ with the usual password
For the full Headlines newsletter contact joanne.evans@coventrydbe.org