Our Vision for Our School

Our school vision starts with our chosen Christian Values of 'Love and Care'. This Christian love means we value everyone and try to think beyond our own 'wants' to empathise with others. This is underpinned by the Prime Commandment, as Jesus shared it, 'to love God, self and others'. This love is turned into care for others by conscious decisions to act and look outwards from self to other people, and our cross-age context enables this. 

Since Love is so central, it forms the basis of our vision statement:

What Does 'Open Our Minds' Mean?

This means to have a positive disposition to trying new experiences and new thinking, such as a different way to solve a Maths problem for example or an idea that challenges your existing thinking. Some areas are complicated to understand, such as the morality of actions of individuals from history - such as why in the past were the achievements of Mary Seacole overlooked. This requires children to question societal rules and expectations to form their own opinions. It involves imagination and thinking. It is also reflective because to try new things you have to accept you might fail at the first attempt and see the learning opportunity this creates. This is how the children describe this:

• 'It means sharing your ideas with other people' (Year 5 child)
• 'It means not pretending that you know everything but to let new ideas come to you' (Year 5 child)
• 'Teachers show us how to do things and then help us to do it ourselves' (Year 5 child)
• 'Think as hard as you can' (Year 3 child)
• 'It means to try different things and give things a try' (Year 6 child)

What does 'Value all Achievement' mean?

Fundamentally this means we want every single child who attends Upham Primary School to do as well as they can, to make as much progress as possible, across all areas of the school curriculum. This means celebrating successes at every stage, be they be the most complex leaps in abstract understanding or the first time a child tries to pick up a pencil, so that children feel a sense of pride about what they have done. Achievements are not just limited to English and Maths, we are just as keen to notice improvements across all subjects. Our celebration assemblies on Fridays are key to modelling these values and children receive certificates for learning from the week - crucially with focus on the effort the child has put in to achieving the result rather than the result itself. The word 'all' is key, seeing everyone's achievements is essential, not just the highest performers. Though children might find some aspects of learning really difficult there will be other areas they excel at, which might be more subtle qualities such as leadership, resilience, courage or self control. This is how the children describe this:

• 'We celebrate lots of things like sport, good learning or things from outside of school' (Year 5 child)
• 'We show things off but not in a boastful way' (Year 5 child)
• 'This means being more mindful of people around us' (Year 6 child)
• 'Every one of us' (Year 3 child)
• 'This means being pleased with what you have done and being proud' (Year 3 child)
• 'This is important as it means all of us' (Year 4 child)

What does 'Encourage Independence' mean?

By independence we do not just mean able to organise equipment or look after property, though this is important. Independence is the fundamental skill to learning how to learn (called metacognition). By learning how to solve your own problems and have strategies to work out what to do across a range of experiences or situations, children learn resilience, self regulation, perseverance and self-help skills. Sometimes this takes time and we give children space to think about something tricky and have a go themselves, before intervening and offering some help or guidance. By the time children reach Year 6, problem solving skills will be well developed and the children will be able to meet the challenges from transition to secondary, in their stride. This is how the children describe this:

• 'This means trying again' (Year 5 child)
• 'Letting people do things on their own' (Year 4 child)
• 'Never giving up - persevering' (Year 3 child)
• 'This means solving problems on your own, trying to figure out questions by ourselves' (Year 6 child)
• 'Helping people to do things on their own' (Year 4 child)