Our school motto:

Believe to achieve, empowering a community of hope and aspiration.

Our motto reflects the firm foundations we believe we give to our children. Children know that with God’s help their aspirations can be reached alongside their hard work and determination. It links to the barriers to learning faced by our pupils and reflects 2 of the key pillars to Christian Vision. The pillars of hope (aspiration) and community.

Life is full of openings, windows that allow us to look out, mirrors which allow us to reflect and doors which allow us to move on. Our biblical quote and motto reflect the importance for our children to not just look out into the world and become aware of its wonders or looking into and reflecting to see things more clearly and asking questions but to look through ‘doors’ and act or express this in terms changing attitudes, behaviours and thinking.

The Biblical quote ‘Ask and it shall be given, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.’ Matthew 7.7 ensures our community knows that with hard work, determination and God's help they can open doors to a brighter future. This is something that school aims to provide; the opportunity, confidence, ambition, curiosity and resilience amongst our community to do. Jesus commanded his followers to continually ask and seek with confidence that they will receive and find.  For our community we aim to give them the confidence to ask questions, be curious, resilient and ambitious, knocking on the door to opportunity and it will be opened. We are to ask our Heavenly Father for the things we need and to keep asking with full assurance that He hears. We are to seek and keep seeking and to knock and keep knocking as He has promised that the door will be opened.

Our School Vision Statement:

Working together to raise aspirations, empowering a community of hope. We seek to develop resilient, curious minds, inspiring all pupils to aim high and be ambitious in all that they do within our church school community.

Our vision statement underpins our teaching and learning and provides an enriching learning environment which promotes the flourishing of all.

It is rooted in the 4 pillars of what is a Christian world view. It incorporates the 4 basic elements which permeate the Church of England vision for education: wisdom, hope, community and dignity.

• Pillar of wisdom: Have the capacity to reason, be curious and to question. Wisdom is how we act on knowledge.
• Pillar of hope: Raise aspirations and empower all to go out and change the world.
• Pillar of community: We show how we unite in shared community beliefs and values but recognise unique beliefs and values of people.
• Pillar of dignity: All humans are valued and treated with dignity and respect.

Our pupils will learn to love themselves, believe in their potential to achieve (their aspirations) and find inner strength and resilience when facing challenges. Whilst full of love and compassion for the marginalised, Jesus was also courageous when he needed to be. We want our chn to be willing to take risks and reflect, to learn and grow from experiences, demonstrating curiosity and open mindedness.

In developing curiosity our children will learn from Jesus’ readiness to use questions to make people think, to challenge assumptions and enable them to come to their own conclusions. Luke 9 18-20. “Who do the people say I am?” “But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”.

Our pupils know that the biblical quote from Matthew 7.7 means that with God's help, we can open the door to a brighter future. We have a display in our entrance of past pupils and what they have achieved since leaving school to inspire our pupils and show them what they can achieve in the future when they leave school.

As a Church of England school, core values sit at the very heart of our school community and our curriculum and underpin everything we do. Although rooted in Christianity our core values are universal human values. We reflect on each with the goal of determining the sort of person we are to become. In our school we aim to be the sort of people that God would want us to be and to treat others in the way we would want them to treat us.

When reflecting on spirituality and our school prayer including what it means to them, some of our Year 4 and Year 5 pupils said ‘treat each other in way we want to be treated’. This was a great starting point for discussion and was expanded to make reference to the Bible quote from Mark below, which became a focal display in our school hall. 

Mark 12 30:31

30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

31 The second is this: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.

Put simply, this implies the golden rule:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, treat others in the way you would want to be treated.

For the oldest children v31 implies that in order to be kind, compassionate and generous to our neighbour, we must first be those things to ourselves. Love your neighbour as you love yourself. This leads into do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

As a Church of England Primary School we aim to earth our values in the wisdom and understanding of the Christian faith and particularly in the gospel values founded in the reality of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the Christian tradition that gives our values content and the story of Jesus that gives our values moral substance.

Our Pupils (through the Collective Worship Council), Foundation Governors and staff chose the following Christian Values for our school:

Our Christian Values link to a learning behaviour which will help our pupils to succeed in the future (with God’s help we can open doors to a brighter future) which form the basis of our curriculum intent. These link to our vision statement which focuses on overcoming the barriers to learning faced by our pupils. 

Our rewards system in school reflects these learning behaviours which are set out below.