The study of TPE at Orwell Park supports the School’s overall aims of enabling students to develop tolerance and understanding of others as well as equipping them for life and work in the 21st century.
The teaching of TPE contributes to learning across the curriculum. It aims at providing opportunities to promote:
- Spiritual development, through consideration of texts from the Judeo-Christian tradition, Which stimulates pupils’ interest and fascination in the world, its creation, development, and current state; through considering the human condition and relating to personal experience and studied example;
- Moral development, through helping pupils formulate and express opinions about issues of right and wrong; through learning about the rules that various religions set down governing how humans should behave toward each other; through exploring the importance of forgiveness;
- Social development, through exploring and appreciating different reactions to the texts; through discovering various responses that people have had to the texts and the difference it has made to their lives; through learning about and appreciating other religious traditions, beliefs and values;
- Cultural development, through providing pupils with insights into cultural differences and opportunities to relate these to their own experience and to consider different religious and cultural traditions, attitudes and behaviours.
Over the course of an Orwell Park education, all six major religions are studied, alongside the foundational biblical texts of the Judeo-Christian tradition. A variety of learning techniques are encountered, and the department aims to make use of the technology that is available to enhance and deepen pupils’ understanding.