Promoting Fundamental British Values.

In accordance with The Department for Education we aim to actively promote British values in schools to ensure young people leave school prepared for life in modern Britain. 

Pupils are encouraged to regard people of all faiths, races and cultures with respect and tolerance and understand that while different people may hold different views about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, all people living in England are subject to its law.

The Key Values are:

•    democracy
•    rule of law
•    individual liberty
•    mutual respect
•    tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs 
 

Democracy

Children, parents and staff have many opportunities for their voices to be heard at our school. Here are some of the ways that we have developed an understanding of democracy in our school.

Each class has an elected member of the School Council. This Council meets regularly and recently they have organised a whole-school letter-writing to the refugees in our community welcoming them to the area.   They also have the opportunity to support fund raising in the school.

House captains are voted for each year.  We use questionnaires to gain the views of children, parents and staff. The questionnaires are reviewed to see how we can improve our provision at the school.  collective worship sessions gather the views of children.  At the end of each half term the children have the opportunity to vote for a class member who has demonstrated the values that are important to the school. These Golden Leaves are on display in our entrance

Individual Liberty

Alongside rules and laws, we promote freedom of choice and the right to respectfully express views and beliefs. Children are encouraged to make their own choices about faith and prayer is encouraged but is not compulsory.

Through the provision of a safe, supportive environment we provide boundaries for our pupils to make choices safely; for example:

 choices about what learning challenge they start at in some tasks; 

 choices around the participation in extra-curricular activities;

 This is achieved in a variety of ways which includes Year 5 and Year 6 taking on roles around the school such as house captain, librarians, sports ambassadors, learning ambassadors and as a member of the worship council.

Rule of Law

The school has four rules which are also our values; show love, show care, show courage, show truth.  Each class starts the new school year by drawing up a set of class hopes and how they would like their class to be.  Home school agreements are signed by parents. Collective worship is used to share and explain the importance of the rule of law and visitors from the police force and fire brigade visit our school to talk about their job and the work that they do.

Tolerance

Tolerance of those of other cultures, faiths and beliefs. At our school  we have  refugee children from around the world and they are supported within our school through a range of activtites to highlight and  undersatnd thier culture and language.

This is achieved through dedicating time to refugee week. The gidde reading books, libttay books and book spine stories focus on a diverse range of cultures, authors, characters and locations. 

In RE lessons and collective worship give children the opportunities to learn about a variety of different faiths and humanism. During the autumn term the worship council have decided that they would like to look in more detail at how we teach the world faiths and are hoping to be able to contact believers from a number of different faiths  so that we can deepen our learning and understanding. 

Our Year 6 children are Anti-Bullying Ambassadors and have achievied the Diana Award.

Mutual Respect

One of our school Christian values is ’Love’ and this is underpinned by respect for others and it is at the heart of our ethos at Birchanger C of E Primary. Our pupils know and understand that it is expected and imperative that respect is shown to everyone, whatever differences we may have.

We show our respect for others through: the School behaviour policy.; the PSHCE curriculum;  Collective worship which celebrates differences and promotes equality;  visits to places of worship; play leaders and sports ambassadors promote equality in play; competitive sports where all are encouraged.