By Year 10 students will already be famil­iar with the basic ideas and tradi­tions of six world reli­gions.
The major­ity of students will be entered for the short course but there is the oppor­tun­ity for some to complete the full course.

RS  Short Course GCSE
The GCSE short course in Reli­gious Stud­ies takes a fresh look at this subject, examin­ing just two reli­gions, Chris­tian­ity and Islam, in greater depth. In this way we are able to exam­ine the ways in which reli­gious belief helps people to make sense of the big issues in their lives.

As soci­ety continu­ally evolves, and science and tech­no­logy forge ahead with “miracle cures” for medical and social prob­lems, many people are left wonder­ing what is right and wrong. How can we decide for ourselves in the “moral maze”?  Examin­ing the views of reli­gious thinkers, both past and present, gives students a start­ing point for making up their minds.

In this course, students’ under­stand­ing of reli­gion is chal­lenged and exten­ded as we look at some of the differ­ent responses to life-and-death issues of our time, for example – abor­tion, euthanasia, animal exper­i­ment­a­tion, clon­ing, arti­fi­cial repro­duc­tion – explor­ing the reli­gious and moral dimen­sions of these diffi­cult and complex subjects. There is no attempt to promote one view as right or better than another. The aim is to encour­age students to look at the evid­ence and eval­u­ate these ideas for themselves.

Assess­ment
One writ­ten paper of 1hour 45minutes.
The exam paper is marked accord­ing to:

Students’ know­ledge and under­stand­ing of the two reli­gious tradi­tions stud­ied (Chris­tian­ity and Islam).
Students’ abil­ity to demon­strate know­ledge and appre­ci­ation of differ­ent points of view.

The course combines these two elements, in the context of the study of the sacred books and special fest­ivals of the two reli­gions. Class discus­sions are used to prac­tise express­ing and listen­ing to differ­ent viewpoints.

Specific­a­tion: WJEC Reli­gious Stud­ies 4459/SC Specific­a­tion B
Click here to down­load the current specific­a­tion for this GCSE course

RS  Full Course GCSE
Students also have the option of taking an addi­tional paper which upgrades the exam into a full course. This involves addi­tional study, cover­ing the same topics but in greater depth.

Assess­ment
Two writ­ten papers of 1hour 45minutes.

Specific­a­tion: WJEC Reli­gious Stud­ies 4450/SA Specific­a­tion B
Click here to down­load the current specific­a­tion for this GCSE course