School Vision Statement
With guidance from our Lancashire County Council School Advisor and in consultation with pupils and a working party of parents, governors and staff, we replaced our school Mission Statement with the following Vision Statement in September 2019:
Learning together, rooted in God, pupils at St Lawrence Church of England Primary School are easy to distinguish by the personal qualities they present. They are happy, confident, articulate children with a love of learning and a sense of service, who recognise and celebrate their own individuality and that of other members of our community. They are generous, kind and welcoming; they are forgiving and understand justice. With God by their side, they face the world with resilience, integrity and joy.
We feel that this is more meaningful to the children than our previous Mission Statement and that it is a better representation of our school vision and of the aspirations we have for our children. The words in bold are our key values. These values form the basis of all we do in school and help pur children to be responsible and considerate members of society.
We also have a Christian “Tag Line”:
Learning together, rooted in God
This is taken from John 15 Verse 5 – Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain rooted in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit.”
How did we arrive at these words to reflect of vision and practice?
When the working party met, our starting point was to explore the key values we would like our children to have when they leave St Lawrence's and embark on their high school journey. The Deputy Headteacher from Broughton High School, who is also one of our school governors, told us that past pupils of St Lawrence CE Primary School stand out from the rest. They are confident, articulate and caring; they enjoy school and make the most of all it has to offer. This formed the basis of our vision and these qualities (or values) were added to as we brainstormed the values that would help our pupils to achieve their goals and make a postivie contribution to society. This created a very lengthy initial list that was then whittled down to a more manageable list to work with. After a good deal of drafting, editing and redrafting, we eventually had a vision that reflected our aims and resonated with the high standing the school and its pupils hold in the local community.
As a Church of England Primary School, shouldn't all of our values be distinctly Christian?
There was a good deal of discussion around this point. However, we are passionate about the vision we have created and the values it encapsulates. It clearly demonstrates our work in school and the vision we have for its development. The values we have selected do include four distinctly Christian values (Service, Joy, Generosity and Forgiveness) and these have become our Core Values. We have paired the other values with distinctly Christian values for exploration during worship. For example integrity, which is not a Christian value, is paired with truthfulness.
Rev Dr Susan Salt has also linked our school values to stories from the old and new testaments (see below). Rooting our values in scripture helps the children to understand how we are able to live our lives in the way that Jesus has taught us. We also use worship time to explorer modern day examples of each value so that children can see how these are relevant to our lives today.
Theological Underpinning
The file below explores the theology of John 15 Verse 1 from which we have taken our Christian Tag line – Learning together, rooted in God
