Our Christian Vision
How we enable pupils to flourish in our school- our theologically-rooted Christian vision:
John 10:10: "I have come in order that you might have life - life in all its fullness."
At St Andrew’s and St Mark’s CofE Junior School, we believe in providing a caring and supportive Christian environment. We achieve innovation in teaching practice and technology. Through these, we succeed as confident and positive life-long learners.
We believe that we are all children of God and a child’s school education comes at a crucial time of development. In our school each individual can grow in mind, body and spirit, aided by the wider community and the teaching of Christian values; we foster an environment in which everyone can become the person God has created them to be.
As such, we want children to experience growth not just in intelligence and wisdom, but also in the openness of their hearts, for, as Irenaeus put it, ‘the glory of God is a human fully alive.’ Intelligence, wisdom and openness creates life-long learners.
What does our look like in our practice?
As a church school, teaching, promoting and enacting Christian values forms the core of everything we do. Our school is based on opportunities within and beyond the curriculum and developing children's character and morality in accomplished hand-in-hand with academic study.
Collective worship is the heartbeat of our school. Through collective worship, we focus on each of our 12 Christian values in turn. We conduct check-ins with every pupil twice everyday to see how the Christian values are being lived out in children's lives. Each class has a prayer corner, which gives children the opportunity to explore different faiths and reflect. Each unit of study across the curriculum begins with a theological link that reminds us that we are studying an aspect of God's Earth and learning from Jesus' teaching. Using Spacemakers, each pupil has an opportunity to reflect each day (as one pupil put it, 'We get to have peaceful to think about who we are'. At the end of the school day, each class finishes with our school prayer.
Every pupil is treated well and we welcome pupils of any faith or no faith to our school. Through the RE curriculum, a wide range of different faiths are explored.
Promoting British Values
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