Our Christian Values
Being a Church of England school is very important to us. At Thundridge, our Christian vision and values are central to everyday life at the school. Leaders, including our governing body, use our vision as a basis for planning and decision making to ensure all children and adults in our school community can flourish. We use the Bible story of 'The Good Samaritan' to illustrate our three core values.
'A community learning together in God's love'
CURIOSITY, COURAGE, COMPASSION
We aim to enable everyone in our school community to:
- Be interested to develop a love and independence for learning and be ready to try new things.
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Be brave enough to make mistakes, have a go at challenges and try again.
- Be kind showing respect and care to all.
Our vision is closely linked to the Church of England’s ‘Vision for Education’:
Educating for wisdom, knowledge and skills: enabling discipline, confidence and delight in seeking wisdom and knowledge, and developing talents in all areas of life. CURIOSITY
Educating for hope and aspiration: enabling healing, repair and renewal, coping wisely when things go wrong, opening horizons and guiding people into ways of fulfilling them. COURAGE
Educating for community and living well together: a core focus on relationships, participation in communities and the qualities of character that enable people to flourish together. A COMMUNITY LEARNING TOGETHER IN GOD’S LOVE
Educating for dignity and respect: the basic principle of respect for the value and preciousness of each person, treating each person as a unique individual of inherent worth. COMPASSION
Theological Roots
Our vision is theologically rooted in the parable of ‘The Good Samaritan’. This is a story from the Bible which is told by Jesus. It illustrates our core values in the following ways:
Compassion:
The Samaritan stops to help the injured man showing care and respect.
Courage:
Whilst others walked past and left the injured man, the Samaritan showed courage to do the right thing and help him.
Curiosity:
The Samaritan showed curiosity (and more courage) to help and speak to the injured man who was from a different community.
We use God’s word with links to two Bible verses from ‘The Good Samaritan’:
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself (Luke 10:27)
This verse illustrates the central Christian theme of love which underpins our three ‘C’s.
Jesus told him ‘Go and do likewise’ (Luke 10:37)
This verse illustrates Jesus’ teaching from the parable, which we link to our three ‘C’s and use to help us ‘live them out’
We encourage our children to 'live out' our value and to 'go and do likewise' themselves. We celebrate this through displays around the school and our star of the week certificates.
We use the following resources to support children when learning about our vision:
The Lion Storyteller Bible – The Kind Stranger story (we use the words from the Bible with our older classes)
Out of the Ark Music – Love the Lord Your God song
Our vision was agreed following consultation with stakeholders. Children, staff, governors and families shared the values most important to them and their aspirations for the children. Analysis showed strong links to the four key areas of the Church of England’s Vision for Education. From here, our three ‘C’s and strapline were developed. The context of our school: its small size, its rural location and its lack of diversity led us to choose each one.
Curiosity:
We want our children to be curious about others and the wider world to develop their experience and awareness of the difference and diversity we sometimes lack in our setting.
Courage:
We want our children to have courage to use their voices courageously in the larger settings and wider world they will move on to. We want our children to have the resilience and independence to make mistakes and ‘stand on their own two feet’.
Compassion:
We want our children to show compassion to all and to have a broad understanding of compassion for others, including from the wider world and those who are different from themselves.
We enjoy close links with our village church. Children attend services every term. In the summer, we are also invited to visit the Thundridge Old Church.
Our school meets for an act of collective worship every day either coming together in our special collective worship room or sharing this time as a class. You can see more details in our policy:
Old Church Service
