Vision and Values

ENABLING PERSONAL GROWTH WITH A DESIRE TO LEARN AND ACHIEVE, FOR EVERY CHILD, EVERY DAY.

Building on the framework of the National Curriculum, our curriculum additionally ensures that it has citizenship and learning skills embedded at its core. We teach topics that are relevant to our community and the children represented within. We provide opportunities for enrichment that go beyond the curriculum, such as Forest School and Drama. We do this to promote the values and skills that we know are important for children to achieve well and feel confident.  We are proud to be an inclusive school and hence our vision statement is ‘every child, every day’. Through the teaching of metacognitive strategies, we call these ‘Learning Powers’, our children will build resilience, independence and the ability to take risks and learn from happy mistakes, by doing this our children will discover what they can do and what they have the potential to do; enabling them to be the best they can be.

We will do this through the values of:

Excellence

Through our teaching and learning, children will make excellent progress from their individual starting points because they have access to quality first teaching which delivers learning through key skills and knowledge that allows them to succeed year on year.  

Ambition

We want children to aspire to achieve, regardless of gender, ethnicity or socio-economic status.  They will obtain skills through an ambitious curriculum that enables children to know who they are and what they can be, promoting each child to be the best version of themselves.

Positive contribution

Children at Arunside will have an appreciation of their place in The World. This includes an understanding of how the way we live our lives impacts our planet and each other. Every child will develop a sense of belonging but maintain their unique identity. They will know they have a positive contribution that they can make to the world whilst understanding the need to do so.

Responsibility

We have a responsibility as a school community to live our values and use them to shape our school.  The result is an atmosphere of kindness and friendship that ensures everyone feels safe to make mistakes, safe to talk and safe to learn at its fullest.  Our children know that they have rights, but that these are coupled with the responsibility to show respect for the rights of others.

Learning Powers

 Our Learning Powers build on research that supports a metacognitive approach to learning. We do this to ensure all children understand ‘how to learn’ and develop skills that support personal growth through resilience, team working and independence. To develop the ability to self-assess and monitor their progress for academic achievement, they will learn how to build connections with prior learning, plan their work, deduce and problem solve with an ability to evaluate the outcome for their own next steps.

Building Learning Power Characters and their Stories

Building Learning Power Progression of Skills

We celebrate that our pupils, families and staff come from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds. We are proud of the diversity of our school, and of the role we play in supporting the development of individuals who will have the tools, skills and confidence to make a positive contribution to their communities, and beyond. We work hard to ensure our pupils leave prepared to deal with life in modern day Britain.

We promote ‘British Values’ through our Social Moral Spiritual and Cultural (SMSC) education which supports the development of the ‘whole child’. We recognise that such development is most successful when those values and attitudes are promoted by all the staff and provide a model of behaviour for our pupils.

The DfE have reinforced the need to “create and enforce a clear and rigorous expectation on all schools to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs” and Arunside aims to achieve this in the following ways:

Individual Liberty

We promote children’s freedom of choice and their right to hold and express views and beliefs in a respectful and considered way. Through the provision of a safe, supportive environment, we have boundaries in place that allow children to make choices safely. We believe that valuing choice and freedom in daily school life will foster a value for individual liberty as the children embark upon their adult lives. Children are encouraged to know, understand and exercise their rights and personal freedoms. They are advised how to do these safely, e.g through PSHE and e-safety lessons and are strongly encouraged to develop independence in learning and to think for themselves through the promotion of metacognitive strategies and our ‘Building Learning Power’ characters.

Mutual Respect and Tolerance of those with different Faiths and Beliefs

We offer a culturally rich and diverse curriculum in which all major religions are studied and respected. Children learn to celebrate diversity and our PSHE curriculum is designed so that children develop age appropriate knowledge and understanding of the protected characteristics over their time in primary school. The school promotes respect for ourselves and respect for others and this is reiterated through our school/classroom charters as well as our behaviour policy. Through our curriculum and the routines of our daily school life, we strive to demonstrate tolerance and help children to become knowledgeable and understanding citizens who can build a better Britain for the future. Children’s behaviour demonstrates their good understanding of respect and tolerance in action.

The Rule of Law

Our children learn that they will encounter rules and laws throughout their entire lives. We want our children to understand that whether these laws govern the class, the school, the neighbourhood or the country, they are set for good reasons and must be adhered to. This understanding of the importance of rules is consistently reinforced through assemblies, in classrooms, around the school and through our curriculum. The involvement of our pupils in the creation of the school rules, such as our PSHE and playground charters, helps them to understand the reasons behind the rules. Through Democratic Circles, assemblies and PSHE lessons, we allow opportunity to debate and discuss the reasons for laws so that children can recognise the importance of these for their own protection.

Democracy

Children, parents and staff have many opportunities for their voices to be heard and democracy is central to how we operate as a school.  Children learn about democracy and value the democratic process, and come to understand that this is the way our country is governed. They know that their voice is heard, but also that everyone’s views count equally. This helps them to become active members of a democratic society. Pupils are listened to by adults and are taught to listen carefully and with concern to each other, respecting the right of every individual to have their opinions and voices heard.  Pupils also have the opportunity to air their opinions and ideas through our School and Eco Council, Democratic Circles, PSHE lessons and through collation of pupil voice linked to the safeguarding and wider curriculum areas.