2. Wisdom, Knowledge and Skills

Slide 2

Wisdom, Knowledge and Skills

Provision: In developing wisdom, knowledge and skills in a Church school, the school must evaluate:? (Actions taken):

Our Curriculum of Grace is designed with God at the centre

Impact: How do you know it is working?

Hard data demonstrates that outcomes are good.  Soft data, including parental feedback and collective worship show that our children and through them, parents,  have a good knowledge of how to have a relationship with God

Actions taken

As a faith school our vision for the newly written curriculum puts Christ at the center of all learning. Our Intent states …’woven through the curriculum are opportunities to explore faith..’

For a small school we have a high number of children with EHCPs. As a result we have a very highly developed provision map to meet the needs of our additional needs children. These interventions are not only academic but also pastoral such as lego group and therapeutic crafts.

We have established a small group for children whose parents are in prison

Our Pupil premium allocation is relatively small but used wisely to support our vulnerable children.

We have also issued a personal invite to all of our identified vulnerable families to attend ‘Wellspring’.
Impact

We are living out our mission statement every day, learning the gospel values, praying, reading the bible, and making disciples.

We value difference and try to remove barriers to learning to ensure every child achieves their potential.

As a group the children are learning to be more resilient and come to terms with what is in actuality a bereavement.

The vast majority of children identified as pupil premium or vulnerable receive the bespoke support they need eg after school clubs, uniform, residential trips. Once identified further support is also provided in terms of food packages, Christmas presents referrals for specific items eg a paddling pool.

The families hear the word of God and also importantly receive a high quality cooked meal.
Actions taken

School has a very structured approach to prayer.
 
As a school we ask children to make themselves ready for prayer. – our children join hands, stand, raise their hands. They truly understand that prayer is a conversation with God.
 
We have a prayer tree in the foyer and in the body of our school (made by a past pupil) and encourage the children to write prayers.
As part of every worship session the children are encouraged to pause and reflect.  We play music and the children are encouraged to be still.
 
Ethos Group and God Squad regularly write prayers and these prayers are used as a part of worship.
 
Prayer spaces are held every year and this year we organized the Ethos day for all the LDST schools in connection with St. James and this was based on prayers.
 
We use Twitter to tweet prayers.
 
The Korean prayer mission visited Wellspring
 
The Archbishop of York attended Wellspring and taught us how to focus and to pray using beads.
Impact

Our children can be still.  They can listen for God. When the school goldfish died,  unprompted, the children wrote prayers on post it notes and stuck them to the tank.

Prayer is central to the life of St Paul’s School
In the hurly burly of life, the children are presented with opportunities to be still and reflect.

Children feel comfortable putting their feelings about prayer into action

We introduced the prayer hand to remind children who to pray for. Eg leaders, the sick, family

Parents who perhaps do not have the confidence to pray or do not know how are given a prayer to say and are reminded to pray.

We witnessed an amazing and very freeing way to pray.  It was very loud and vocal.  Many people attended and then we spoke about this mission in school during worship and the children who had attended the prayer mission shared their experience.

SMT and children who attended Wellspring shared this amazing experience with the whole school and demonstrated the power of focused prayer during worship.

Create a St. Paul’s prayer book.  Put music to the Psalm we have written to create a prayer in this manner.