The Department, consisting of three members of staff, follows the AQA Specifications for GCSE and A-level. These syllabuses are intended to be accessible to candidates of any background, with a faith background or none.

The GCSE specification follows AQA Religious Studies B, which is not concerned with learning about the particularities of any religion, but with the relationships between religion and issues faced by society. The syllabus in the Fourth Form studies AQA Religion and Life Issues, including topics such as religion and planet earth, religion and poverty, religion, war and peace and religion and animal rights.

In the Fifth Form study is directed by Religion and Morality asking what should be done about such social issues as wealth and poverty in the UK, crime and punishment, drug abuse, and genetic engineering.

The specifications are distinctly philosophical and ethical in nature, and contain a comprehensive and fascinating range of range of considerations, all studied with reference to one or more of the world’s major religions. The GCSE examinations are terminal with two papers taken at the end of Fifth Form for which four out of six questions have to be answered.

The same philosophical and ethical focus is followed into AS level with one paper considering philosophical views, such as psychology, atheism or arguments from religious experience and how they challenge or affirm religion. The second paper is concerned with ethical theories and how they may be applied to ethical issues faced by society such as abortion or euthanasia.

At A level the course considers how humanity relates to the world and each other when asking whether we are free or predetermined, virtuous or mechanistic. Half of this course is concerned with the phenomenon of fundamentalism and religion, looking at the resurgence of religion in the twenty-first century and the origins of fundamentalist movements in religions.