Visions and Values
Our Values
During 2012 the children and staff of our school developed a value based school. Using the values of the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics we explored those that were most valuable to our school community and came up with a word that means something to us all.
FREE stands for Friendship, Respect, Excellence and Equality
‘FREE’ also articulates what we want our children to be... Free to learn, Free to achieve, Free to be whoever they want to be in life, Free from the effects of bullying and deprivation. This supports the school aims:
Opening doors to exciting learning, the wider world and a fulfilled future
The values are underpinned by a bespoke scheme of work that teaches children explicitly and implicitly about the values. This is written to cover the requirements of the PHSE curriculum whilst also adding an extra dimension particularly with respect of the need to ensure that our multicultural, diverse community learns how to live together in harmony.
Our behaviour policy is entirely based on the values with children being rewarded for achieving aspects of FREE. There is also a house based system with house captains leading the children in house activities and earning house points in Friendship, Respect, Excellence and Equality.
Collective worship is also based around these values with staff and visitors leading sessions to exemplify their understanding of what it means to be friendly, respectful, excellent and equal.
British Values
British Values that we share with many countries in the world, are discussed in collective worship and in our FREE programme. Mr Cooper often uses assembly time to talk about important people and events in British and world history to help the children understand these values and we have a giant timeline in the hall that we add to afterwards to help us remember the stories.
If you visit the childrens' section of the website you will see details of some of these people and events.
F.R.E.E. Assemblies
Miss Innes leads F.R.E.E assemblies where the children learn about aspects of our F.R.E.E values e.g:
- Anti - Bullying assemblies to learn the difference between Rude, Mean and Bullying
- Assemblies about children's rights
- Online safety assemblies
- Assemblies about Equality and how we are all different whilst also being all the same
Achievement Awards
On Tuesdays in KS1 and Thursdays in KS2 we have special assemblies where teachers award achievement certificates to children who have shown FRIENDSHIP, RESPECT, EXCELLENCE OR EQUALITY in their work, their behaviour, their treatment of others and their attitudes. Some children earn our special "FREE Champion" Award for exceptional demonstration of our values and they then get invited by Mr Cooper to a special tea party at the end of each term.
Equalities in Education
Below you will find a copy of our full policy statement and also a review of our recent actions and our plans for the year ahead.