School Values

Our School Values form the bedrock of everything we do at St John's. They guide all our actions and decisions. We immerse the children in these values and they are present throughout the school environment. When the children leave St John's and move on to their secondary schools, they have internalised the values, influencing the choices they make as they travel through their lives.

In 2015, we were awarded the Values Education kite mark for the values curriculum and ethos that we provide. We have a two-year rolling programme of twenty-two monthly Value Words which form the basis of our all our assemblies and worship times and also contribute to a number of values-based projects the children experience. These include values such as Respect, Love, Honest and Perseverance. They are the big ideas which guide our decisions and provide a moral compass so that we can lead effective lives. We encourage the children (and ourselves as staff members) to talk about them, reflect on them, embody them and live them out in every area of our lives. The children engage with our values-based curriculum projects, such as working with dying patients at St Christopher's Hospice, learning about the needs of a baby in the Roots of Empathy programme and working with their disabled friend from Greenvale Special School. Many of the core books the children study in Literacy lessons are also linked to our value words. The children are also encouraged to use the value words at home and we include the parents in our values education too, teaching and speaking about the values with the families of our school.