NEW website launched by the CofE marks a groundbreaking initiative to identify the distinctive values that make Christian schools popular with parents and students, and promote ways of living out those values in the day-to-day activities of a busy school environment.
The website, www.christianvalues4schools.co.uk, identifies 15 core values - including ‘Service,Trust and
Forgiveness' - which are introduced with brief theological reflections and examples of how schools have brought these values to life, through everything from collective worship to garden design and architecture.
The website also contains questions and ideas for how staff and governors might engage with these values, including:
? Discussing the themes at ‘circle time' and school councils; and recording the responses on a ‘value tree' to create a permanent display at the heart of the school building
? Presenting award cups to individuals during school acts of worship, as a recognition of how students have demonstrated individual values such as generosity to others
? Staff going on a ‘learning walk' around the school, to look for evidence of how individual values
are demonstrated in the classroom.
The project, commissioned by the Church of England's National Society, is designed to enable the nation's 5,000 Church of England schools - as well as schools without formal church links - to explore these themes as an aid to strategic planning that can help make a school distinctively Christian, while remaining inclusive, as Church of England schools have been since they first began almost 200 years ago.
The website includes an initial collection of case studies and good practice gathered from schools across
England and Wales, which will grow as schools contribute their ideas and experiences.
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