Our Mission statement is Learning and Living through Jesus Christ. We live out this mission through a committed Christian leadership of the school and a close collaboration with St Paul's Church. Our ethos is to welcome everybody of all faiths and beliefs and embrace diversity within a Christian setting.
As a faith school, our mission is to provide a Christian education for all children who attend our school. Our curriculum allows children to explore their own faith and the faith of others in a safe and caring environment which promotes learning and living through Jesus Christ to allow children to explore the awe and wonder of the world that God has created for us.
We have strong links with St Paul's Church and each week, the Vicar leads collective worship for the whole school and visitors are welcome to attend. During the pandemic, the leadership team of Wigan West hub have been leading worship virtually to maintain this link. This link was shared with the whole school community to allow as many people to share in God's word. At regular points during the Year, the school visits church to celebrate together with the community. These include Harvest, Christmas, Ash Wednesday and our celebration of learning. In addition, classes visit church to enhance their learning, Furthermore, the church put on learning experiences at Easter and Christmas to demonstrate different aspects of the Easter and Christmas stories.
We have an Ethos committee which is led by a faith leader and each month they lead worship within the school. They also meet regularly to share their ideas and add to our Christian vision.
School governors include our local Vicar, Rev Mark Wade who opens and closes each meeting in prayer to ask God to guide the governing body to make the best decisions for the pupils, parents staff and community of St Paul's. The RE link governor informs the governing body as to how our faith is lived through the lessons and our RE scheme of work has been devised by the Blackburn Diocese. Our Christian values permeate all lessons through the Curriculum of Grace. All subject leaders ensure that a bible quite relating to their subject is included within their policy and schemes of work are designed to include links to Christianity wherever possible.
Each class has their own Christian Value which the pupils in that class focus on whilst they are in this class. This deepens their understanding of the true meaning of Christianity and how Christian values should shape our lives. In conjunction with this, each Christian value is linked to a British Value to demonstrate how living live as a committed Christian encourages good citizenship that is spread throughout the community.
Prayer is an integral part of our school day and each day begins with a collective worship of some form, whether that be as a whole school, as a key stage or a class. Prayerfulness is taught from the moment children arrive at our school and there are opportunities to pray for ourselves and others through our use of prayer leaves and prayer trees. Every year, we invite the local prayer leaders to lead in Prayer Spaces where there is a specific focus on different types of prayer. In the last Prayer Spaces, we devised a prayer hand to help children to help to focus on different aspects of prayer such as thankfulness, forgiveness, praying for others and themselves.
As a school, we have looked at Christianity on a global scale and support projects such as The New Hope For Africa Charity and have provided sponsorship to improve sanitation in Zambia. On a national scale, we support charities such as the Poppy Appeal, Save the children Christmas jumper day and Children in Need.
More locally, we have our weekly worship opportunity at Wellspring. This is where the Church and School come together to offer support to the community in the form of biblical discussions, practical help and community support. from this, small groups have met for a coffee morning morning to do bible study and also support each other in their daily lives. To enhance the community feel, each week food is provided so that people can sit down and share a meal in a safe and welcoming environment. School have worked with wellspring to provide food parcels for the most vulnerable in our community.