Values and Ethos
‘I have come that they may have life, life in all its fullness’ John 10:10
Our vision is lived out through our core values of Respect, Aspire, Challenge and Succeed. These values were chosen alongside the writing of the vision, the staff and parents explored a number of different words that they felt would guide our children towards leading fulfilling lives whilst with us, and beyond. They encourage our children to live within society in a respectful, understanding and compassionate manner, to stretch beyond expectations, know that anything could be possible and celebrate all that they achieve.
Our Core Values
RESPECT
We work together to enable learners to respect themselves, one another and the wider community. Children are supported to be kind, compassionate and forgiving towards one another. Always treating others as they themselves would want to be treated. We show respect to all. Our pupils are taught to respect those that love and care for us, our parents, carers and those in our local community. Everyone is special, everyone’s opinion matters, everyone’s contribution matters, everyone’s feelings should be considered, everyone’s faith is sacred.
ASPIRE
We encourage learners to aspire to be the best they can be, equipping them with knowledge, creativity and life skills. We try to ensure all our children have plenty of opportunities to learn about what they could achieve both within school, and beyond school or later in life. Recent involvement in a project with UEA is allowing our children to think more about the future, and visit the university as part of this.
CHALLENGE
We support, nurture and challenge our learners during their school journey. We enable our children to explore how they could challenge themselves to be better, both academically and personally. We ask, how could we be better people and provide the tools to help everyone to achieve this.
SUCCEED
We celebrate when our children succeed and encourage them to be proud of what they achieve as the worldwide family of Christians support one another. We encourage the children to celebrate themselves, and others, and use this enthusiasm to help others to succeed.
Holy Cross Church of England Primary School is a church school, we are a village school in service to a community here for each and every family, and as such it is important to us to display and maintain our Christian distinctiveness. However, it is not a faith school, and children of all faiths and no faith can attend the school. Our ethos incorporates many of the Christian values and these run through all that we do in school.
Christian Ethos
Our school's foundations are strongly rooted in our Christian Ethos. Our daily act of worship promotes the spiritual growth and well being of our children through reflecting on and responding to the themes discussed. Over the years we have valued the close links we have formed with our local church. We welcome visitors from the local church community. We make frequent visits to our village church, Ely Cathedral and our school is a part of the Grace Schools.
Our acts of collective worship follow the church calendar celebrating the Christian festivals throughout the year. Children are encouraged to contribute to these occasions. Parents do have the right to be able to withdraw their child/children from collective worship. If you wish to do so please contact our lead for collective worship: Mrs Waterson.
As a Church School, it is important to us all that we maintain our Christian ethos and our school prayer echoes the values of the school.
School Prayer
Father God,
At Holy Cross we ask that you,
Look after us the whole day through.
Give us the skills to respect each other,
And share our aspirations with one another.
Support us as we rise to the challenges You give,
And thank you for the opportunities we have to grow and live.
Amen
