Our School Ethos, Aims & Values
St. James’ Catholic Primary School Vision
Our curriculum stems from our Mission Statement: We belong to the lovely family of St. James’ has been designed to reflect that life at St. James’ is rich, varied, inclusive, exciting, challenging and inspiring. We are on this journey together. Our bespoke curriculum is designed with children at the heart and promotes pupils spiritual, moral social and cultural development and provides opportunities for pupils to:
- Be happy, enthusiastic, curious and reflective learners who actively participate in lessons.
- Think critically, be creative and develop resilience
- Celebrate cultural, ethical differences and equality from the very beginning of their journey in school.
- To become responsible, and caring citizens who appreciate diversity and make a positive contribution to our school and wider community.
- To develop their confidence and take responsibility for their learning; working independently and co-operatively with others.
- Build on their knowledge, skills and understanding in all areas to enable them to make rapid progress.
Our bespoke curriculum has been specifically designed with children at the heart. Each subject has been planned with clear National Curriculum links using a subject based approach. This is enhanced by: community links, educational visits, memorable learning experiences which includes: theme days, key speakers and visitors to school. We use a range of teaching strategies that take into account the ways in which children learn in order to foster engagement, motivation and creativity. Each subject has clear end points, taking into account previous learning and progression. We use a range of teaching strategies that allow for the different ways in which children learn, in order to foster engagement, motivation and creativity.
Language is a key focus for us, both to develop the children’s communication abilities, and also to provide them with the rich and specific vocabulary from across the curriculum that underpins their learning, further enhancing their subject specific knowledge and understanding.
St. James’ promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and prepares them for the opportunities and experiences of later life. Our school facilitates foundations for life-long learning.
St. James’ Catholic Primary School Objectives
We aim:
- To be a fully inclusive school: all aspects of our work will ensure that all learners are given equality of opportunity and treated fairly.
- To promote and achieve high standards for all by providing teaching and learning of the highest quality.
- To treat learners as individuals and to differentiate teaching and learning to take account of their individual needs.
- To provide for learners’ physical, mental, social, spiritual, moral and cultural needs.
- To provide for learners’ care, health and safety.
- To ensure that all learners benefit from a rich, broad, balanced curriculum. It will be taught in an interesting, exciting and imaginative manner with lots of opportunities for first-hand experience.
- To teach basic skills and core subjects, giving great emphasis to the foundation subjects.
- To make connections between subjects and to apply basic skills across the curriculum.
- To enliven and enrich the curriculum by visits, visitors, and extensive use of the environment.
- To give responsibility to learners and develop their self-confidence by contributing to the community.
- To make Governors, parents and the wider community equal partners with the school and to involve them in the evaluation of its success.
- To promote a welcoming and lively environment where learners feel secure.
- To build a school where good behaviour is expected.
- To make this school a place of enjoyment – a place where success is celebrated.
