Source of Life
The Source of Life Religious Education Curriculum is structured around seven organising strands in the primary school and eight organizing strands in the secondary school. These run through the six levels of schooling across Years P-12.
In June 2005 Bishop Joseph Grech promulgated the Religious Education Curriculum, Sandhurst Schools and Parishes were presented with the Source of Life Core Document. In attending to the religious dimension of Catholic schooling, the most fundamental partnerships are those with parents/guardians and with local Catholic faith communities. The school is part of the wider Church community. Catholic Identity is manifest both explicitly and implicitly within both the formal and informal curriculum and life of the community of the Catholic school.
The Catholic school’s core purpose is unashamedly religious. Through the total cultural experience it offers, it shares in the Church’s work of evangelisation, it provides those elements of catechesis that are appropriate to individual students, and it teaches Catholic beliefs and practices in a systematic fashion in programs of classroom-based Religious Education. (Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Sandhurst 2005)
Core Document
Source of Life proposes that Religious Education in its fullest sense belongs not only to the catechetical or religious education program but it encompasses everything in the curriculum. It is about human flourishing in a deeply Christian understanding – whatever makes a student more wise, more loving, more fully human is making the student reflect more fully the image of God.
Learning and teaching in Religious Education must respond to changing contexts and circumstances. Source of Life offers an invitation, a structured approach and an evaluative framework to teachers and leaders, so that they might respond creatively to the challenges they face.
These include in teaching Religious Education: Directions in Australian Society; Directions in the Australian educational context; Changes in the Catholic community; Changes in Catholic schools; Directions in Church teaching on Catholic schools.
The Source of Life Core Document provides parish priests, parish leaders, principals, Coordinators of Religious Education, teachers and parents with an overview of the Source of Life Religious Education curriculum. It places the Religious Education curriculum in its ecclesial, educational and social context.
If you wish to learn more about Source of Life, please visit the Catholic Education office webpage at www.ceosand.catholic.edu.au
