“With thankfulness, courage and love, we strive to improve heart and mind.”
Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst”. John 4:13.
We have chosen John’s Gospel Chapter 4:13 as the biblical underpinning of our school vision and core Christian values of, thankfulness, courage and love, which our school community can articulate and discuss with meaning.
Our School Christian Vision
At Chilton Foliat Primary School we honour our educational heritage, supported by a strong Christian ethos. We strive to provide a diverse education that inspires children to develop a thirst for knowledge. This is delivered in a safe, supportive and nurturing environment promoting self-discipline, motivation and excellence in learning. We encourage strong partnerships and positive relationships amongst pupils, parents, carers, staff and the wider community.
Our school Christian vision is revealed in a collaborative artistic composition; its setting and elements carefully chosen connecting with our current school context and the journey we are on. The flowing river on whose banks we sit, with all its tributaries, surging in the same direction yet sometimes taking a different course to reach the end goal.
This vision was created as part of our vision and values project in July 2019. The children enjoyed working with a visiting artist, Mrs Sue Faux. The project outcome is based on a Mappa Mundi – a historical map that illustrates what a society knows and what it believes is true (which can include truths but also myths). The images describe buildings, animals and natural landmarks that the community knows well. Having discussed the brief with Sue she suggested we chose this method saying, “This seems synonymous with the position of pupils moving further afield as their education progresses and with the school’s Christian values chosen as thankfulness, courage and love. Chilton Foliat has a long and interesting history and a Mappa Mundi would enable us to illustrate the past, present and future in the same piece, as well as creating an opportunity to explore the history of the area.”
Our Curriculum Intent
Underpinning the distinctive Christian vision of the school lies a values curriculum which give focus to many aspects of life at school. The Intent of our curriculum can be summarized in the following:
Curriculum planning for 2022/2023 (which can also be seen on our website) supports our curriculum intent and is underpinned by our three core values: we ask of our children “big questions” linked to their cross-curricular learning journeys. For example: “
- How can I show thankfulness to the world around us?
- How do we show love for our local area?
- How do we conquer the fear of the unknown or unseen?
- Do you have the courage of your convictions?
- Loving our bodies and our minds. What can we do to love ourselves more?
Living Out Our Christian Values
Children and staff discuss and reflect on our core Christian values, of thankfulness, courage and love, during Collective Worship, in class, circle time and in and around the school on a daily basis. These discussions are also linked with appropriate lectionary readings and other biblical references supported by our frequent visits from our local clergy, and our “Open The Book” teams. The choosing of our core Christian values involved the whole school community, including our children, their parents and carers, the whole school staff team and our Governors.
We believe incorporating these values helps to encourage our children to gain self-esteem and self-worth, they become more willing to get involved with decision-making, they become more engaged with the school and they learn better self-control through thinking more intelligently. Relationships improve, with people in the school valuing each other, gaining a better understanding of themselves and the world around them, and providing an additional tool to resolve disagreements.
When we actively engage with our values, we start to understand their implications for making choices about our attitudes and responses. A values-based approach encourages reflective and inspirational attributes and attitudes. These can be nurtured to help people discover the very best of themselves, which enables them to be good citizens and prepare them for the life of work. It equips our children with social capacities that help them work with, and relate to others effectively. It provides them with the self-esteem and confidence to explore and develop their full potential.
Although we keep at the centre of our Christian journey our three key values, we also explore a series of connected Christian values each term, securing deeply our Christian Distinctiveness as a Church of England Primary School. The children are encouraged to continue living out our values and discussing them outside of school.
School Involvement in the life of the local church community
Chilton Foliat Primary School are also proud and protective of our strong links with the local church community. Clergy representatives regularly come to school to guide our children in Collective Worship. Once a week, we also welcome our Open the Book Team who deliver exciting, participative and interactive worships based on relevant readings from the bible through which to engage all our children in the teachings of many Christian concepts and the teachings of Jesus.
The children love to go to our local church, St Mary’s Chilton Foliat. Not only to celebrate our traditional Christian celebrations such as Harvest and Christmas, but also to visit at one of God’s special places. A Reception child summarises the impact our church visits have on the lives of our children, “even though church is cold, I feel warm because I know Jesus lives here.”
Links with charities and similar organisations
Our School Council have an important job of work to do in 2022/2023. The school has chosen three main charities through which we can live out our core Christian values of thankfulness, courage and love.
Charities chosen by our School Council 2022-2023
| Local | Love | Action for the River Kennet (ARK) |
| National | Thankfulness | Children in Need |
| International | Courage | King George VI Centre for children with disabilities in Zimbabwe |
Mental Health and Wellbeing
For our children
The mental well-being for all our children remains at the center of our educational philosophy at Chilton Foliat Primary School; our children learn in a safe, supportive and nurturing environment. We take the gamut of our Safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously, receive regular training and share any concerns (other than formal disclosures which are managed via the DSL and DDSL) at all staff meetings and on an ad hoc basis; no child is left unseen or unheard. Many of our parents choose Chilton Foliat as it is a small school where children across all year groups get along and look after each other. Here is a selection of parent quotes that reflect this:
- “CF has a consistent nurturing and confidence building environment”
- “I know that if my child is worried, she/he knows they can talk to an adult”
- “The teachers are exceptional people who really nurture and care for their pupils”.
- “The size of the school means that all the children know each other and have an incredible bond and sense of caring and looking after each other”.
We have a dedicated Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead actively promoting best practice in this area and signposting our whole school community to resources. We also have a trained Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA) who is passionate about what she does and can offer a range of resources to any of our children to support their emotional development. Reasons for offering support and intervention could include: social skills, emotions, bereavement, anger management, self-esteem.
For our adults
All our staff work incredibly hard to provide our children the best possible educational and enriched primary school experience possible. We are a great team and as such are supportive and caring of each other. The leadership team are mindful of workload and endeavor to set high expectations for professional practice that are reasonable and timely.
In July 2021 we came together to re-examine our Christian Vision
Jesus Talks with a Samaritan Woman (John 4:13)
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”