This syllabus, Living Difference IV, is the Agreed Syllabus for religious education (RE) in Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton. Informed by current educational research, as well as research into religion and world views, it builds on the approach to religious education used in Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton since 2004. 

Living Difference IV describes an approach to teaching, seeking to explain the educational value not only of children engaging with new material intellectually, but also of them becoming better able to discern what is desirable for their own lives, and with others, for the world.

Living Difference IV seeks to introduce children and young people to what a religious way of looking at, and existing in, the world may offer in leading one’s life, individually and collectively.

It recognises and acknowledges that the question as to what it means to lead one’s life with such an orientation can be answered in a number of qualitatively different ways.

These include the idea that:

• To live a religious life means to subscribe to certain propositional beliefs (religion as truth)
• To live a religious life means to adhere to certain practices (religion as practice)
• To live a religious life is characterised by a particular way of being in and with the world: with a particular kind of awareness of, and faith in, the world and in other human beings (religion as existence).

Living Difference IV recognises the link between religious education and rights respecting education (RRE).

More information can be found here: Improvement and Advisory Service: Living Difference IV