Our Values
Our Values
Adderley provides a Values-based curriculum; values which are firmly aligned with our Christian ethos and rooted by biblical foundations. This means that we live, learn and teach by a set of values that will ensure our pupils develop the skills to be good citizens in the future. Our curriculum is underpinned by these values and these values are woven into our teaching and learning on a daily basis helping our pupils to develop improved social and emotional skills that will positively affect behaviour.
Our Christian Values are:
Respect – This means valuing and celebrating our differences, being kind to one another, and following Jesus’ teachings to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.
Thankfulness – 'Count your blessings' is an old saying, but it reminds us to be thankful and not take things for granted.
Justice – In order for people to live together well in a just community, it is important to have rules or laws that everbody stick to.
Compassion – This is about 'standing in someone else's shoes' when they are having a hard time. Trying to understand how they might be feeling and doing our best to try to help.
Truthfulness – This is the quality of acting honestly and honourably - no matter who's watching!
Courage – This means being brave and confident in standing up for ourselves and others. Aiming high and being positive towards our learning even when things can appear tricky.
We see our values linking in the following ways:
OUR WINDOW
This is how we value the world around us and we have based this on our awareness and understanding of the British values of democracy, the rule of law, tolerance and mutual respect and individual liberty. We have looked at how we demonstrate these values in school through elections to our Junior Leadership Team, through work on anti-discrimination, awareness of other religious celebrations and through our behaviour policy.
OUR MIRROR
These are the values by which we look at ourselves and reflect how we wish to behave. At Adderley, these are embedded into our daily life at school in terms of our conduct and approach to our learning and each other. We link these principles to our assemblies, to bible stories and to our behaviour policy and also to our rewards system.
OUR DOOR
This is the fundamental value that we find from Christian teachings which makes us want and desire to make a difference to each other and the world and go out ‘via the door’ to make a contribution to society, both in school, at home, nationally and internationally. This is based on the parable of The Good Samaritan as we want children to show compassion, tolerance and love. We champion being advocates for change and those who are less fortunate than oursleves.
Why a values based curriclum?
“Why do we behave the way we do? What is it that drives us to give to charity or to help children to develop as happy, stable people? It is our values that determine our thinking and our behaviour. They are the principles, standards or life stances that act as guides to our behaviour. They are our beliefs about what is worthwhile, the ideals for which we strive. They are the standards by which particular beliefs and actions are judged to be good or desirable. They help us make decisions and evaluate the actions of others.”
(Dr Neil Hawkes)
Teaching children values improves pupils’ self-esteem, improves their behaviour and raises standards of learning even higher. There are 6 values which we teach and which drive the heartbeat of our school and enable us to, not only acquire knowledge, but enable us to flourish. Each half term we focus on one of our values during our daily worship, teachers also explicitly teach the half term's value in PSHE lessons. Wherever possible the value is taught and evidenced in other areas of the curriculum. Most importantly, adults in the school ensure that we are role-models for each of the values.
As a church school, our ethos is underpinned by a commitment to these Christian values. The ethos statement from our Instrument of Government states:
‘Recognising its historic foundation, the school will preserve and develop its religious character in accordance with the principles of the Church at parish and diocesan level. The school aims to serve its community by providing education of the highest quality within the context of Christian belief and practice. It encourages an understanding of the meaning and significance of faith and promotes Christian values through the experience it offers all its pupils.’