St. Peter's Vision and Values

Church School Uniqueness

Vision:

Strive Beyond; Defy Limits

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.”

Colossians 3:23

St. Peter's is a supportive and caring learning community.  Our Christian vision is the foundation of everything that we do.  As you enter our building, you see a boat like the one used by St Peter and his friends when Jesus was here.  It reminds us of the friendship and collaboration they experienced; some of the challenges they overcame; and the amazing things that Jesus did through them.

We say: ‘Strive Beyond; Defy Limits’.  That is certainly what those disciples of Jesus did, and we really mean it for ourselves.  In all our planning and implementation, we aim to equip children with a love of learning and passion to succeed.  We make education memorable, cutting-edge and challenging.

Children will leave St. Peter’s having been influenced by our Christian values, equipped as expert learners, and endowed with a rich tapestry of core skills and competencies, to allow them to achieve anything.

Our biblical text is taken from the book of Colossians.  It encourages us to strive beyond in everything we do.  Whatever we do, we will do it to the very best of our ability, with all our heart.  Whether we are staff or pupils, we all recognise the importance of applying ourselves to everything we do, so that we can achieve as much as possible.

Our text is based on words from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, written by King Solomon.  He was considered to be the wisest person on earth in his day.  As he writes, he is looking back over his life.  There were things that confused him, things that he found hard to understand, but above all he had learned the importance of doing everything as well as possible.

In order to strive beyond, defy limits, and do everything with all our heart, we need the strength of our Christian values of community, aspiration, wisdom and respect.

Values:

Courageous Advocacy

How we live out this in our school – a celebration of excellence

At St. Peter’s, we firmly believer that, “our humanity is ‘co humanity’, inextricably involved with others, utterly relational, both in our humanity and our shared life on a finite planet. Children at St. Peter’s understand that they have a Christian duty to contribute positively to their communities and that it is only by supporting each other that we can flourish. To ensure children were actively involved in supporting the wider community, we decided to work towards the UN Rights Respecting Award. Overseen by our PSHE leader, each class is tasked with selecting one right each year that they will champion over the coming academic year. As a class, it is then their responsibility to organise a programme of events to either draw attention to an issue or raise funds to support charities that link to their chosen right.

Following an initial launch event at the start of the year, each class is given a series of deadlines throughout the academic year that they must meet. To further emphasise the power of collaboration and collective wisdom, we take the decision to pair up our youngest children with our oldest. To ensure that the projects completed are of a high standard, ample time is allocated within each term to focus solely on each class project.

Examples of the work the children undertook in 2021/22:

• EYFS and Yr. 6 joined together to organise a sweet sale in aid of a local education charity. As well as this, Yr. 6 created
• Yr. 1/2 have organised a clothes collection in support of struggling local families.
• Yr 3/4 Leading assemblies illustrating the potential inequalities in gender and how to counteract gender stereotypes. As well as this, the class did an audit of our key texts to ensure that it reflected a diverse world view.

To ensure that the projects remain on task, manageable and impactful, the Rights Respecting Lead visits each classroom regularly to be briefed as to any developments or challenges encountered. In addition to this, each class has a dedicated slot each week dedicated to focusing on their chosen right.

The difference that it makes

We have found that as a result of participation in the Rights Respecting Schools Award our children:

• Know about their rights
• Can exercise their rights in a mindful and respectful manner
• Understand that they are of value to the school and wider community
• Can recognise when the rights of others are being restricted and fight for them

Children are visibly impassioned when talking about their chosen right and have a markedly better appreciation of the challenges others face within our local area and wider afield; this contrasts with the start of the year, when children struggled to articulate challenges facing the local and global community.

Quotes from children and staff:

“I love our Rights Respecting project. My favourite moment was when we spoke in front of the whole school about celebrating diversity.” Year 4 pupil

“I was amazed at how deeply passionate the class felt about championing the rights of others. It was hugely heart-warming to see how impassioned they were about the need to support refugees. As a result of the award, my class now understand that they can and should be a voice for those in need.” Year 6 teacher

Our DSAT Vision Statement is shown below and more detail can be seen by clicking here.