Our Church Academy
Our Christian Distinctiveness
Our Ethos and Values
Our Christian values and vision are at the core of everything we do. They provide the foundation upon which children can develop as individuals and aspire to be the best they can be at St Anne’s Church Academy . This links to our ‘Learning without Limits’ ethos where we believe no child should ever have a limit put on their learning. We passionately believe that everyone is capable of extraordinary and incredible things. We believe that each child should aim to be the best they can be and we aim to provide them with a range of opportunities to achieve this.
St. Anne’s Vision
‘Learn to Love…Love to Learn’
This is based upon the message in the book of Corinthians.
“Love is Patient, Love is Kind, Love Never Fails – 1 Corinthians 13”
Click the link to view our vision Learn to Love 
We believe that everything we do within the school and for our wider school community comes from love. Love for others, love for ourselves, love for God and love for the world which God created and everything in it. We believe that it is when children feel loved, safe and secure they can learn and flourish. We strive to ensure all our children feel this within our school. We seek to develop high levels of academic achievement and personal well-being within a loving Christian context. We aim to provide a stimulating learning atmosphere in which the potential of all can be realised. We recognise and cherish our role within the wider community and seek to build strong links between home, school and local community. St. Anne’s has very strong partnerships with two local churches, St. Andrew’s at Congresbury and Locking Castle Church at West Wick.
Worship and Daily prayer
Our daily worship is an integral part of the school day. Worship takes place as a whole school or in classes. Worship is led by the Principal and church leaders. Worship is a time to come together as one and grow spiritually through the experiences of prayer, stillness, song, stories and reflection. We end each week with a celebration worship when we celebrate our wonderful learners and their achievements from both inside and outside school.
‘Go in peace to ‘Learn to Love and to Love to Learn’ is said at the end of every worship following our closing prayer.
Children are encouraged to write their own prayers which are then shared at the end of the school day. We also say a lunchtime prayer before leaving the class. Each class has its own book of prayers written by the children in that class and this is kept on display in the reflection area of the classroom.
For more details about worship, please read the Worship page.
Religious Education
Click link below for RE Statement of Entitlement
‘Religious education in a Church school should enable every child to flourish and to live life in all its fullness. (John 10:10). It will help educate for dignity and respect encouraging all to live well together.’
The RE curriculum allows our pupils to acquire a deep knowledge and understanding of Christian belief and practice through the use of the resource ‘Understanding Christianity’. Teaching and learning involves engagement with biblical text and theological
ideas. As a church school, the RE curriculum explores core concepts and questions along with meaningful and informed dialogue with a range of religions and worldviews. We provide children with opportunities for them to understand the role of texts, beliefs, rituals, and practices in a range of religions and worldviews. In addition, our RE curriculum contributes to British values and spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
Courageous Advocacy
As a school, we aim to develop children who can recognise and understand issues of injustice both within the local community and the wider world.
Groups of children from the school have made a significant impact locally through our after school club ‘Community and well-being club’ run by the Learning Mentor and supported by a Church Leader. The group regularly go out litter picking in all weathers to
clean up the streets around the local area where most of the children live.
When the children heard from the Kenya Hope Charity that most children at Malanga Primary School in Kenya did not have a school dinner because they couldn’t pay for one, they decided to do something about this injustice. All of the children in the school took part in a sponsored walk and raised £2,200. The money paid for a field next to Malanga Primary to be ploughed by a tractor, manured, fertilised and planted with maize and beans. Now all the children in the school can have a school meal. Next year, the children want to raise more money for improvements to the school kitchen.
We encourage children to speak out and become news reporters through our Jill Dando News Team. These children /reporters work with senior members of staff and secondary colleagues to produce articles for the Trust’s newspaper.
Our Year 4 children take part in the Archbishop of York Young Leaders Award which is a fantastic project to inspire children to be the change that they want to see in the world around them. It is a well structured, educational resource which supports children to explore and reflect on what might make their local community better. This last couple of years, the children were inspired to spend time with the elderly in a local care home and with members of the local church. The children chose to do this because they felt that the elderly people can be lonely and thought they could bring them some joy. The children performed songs and shared some of their recent learning which got the conversations going for a long time.
This year, Year 4 have organised and run a ‘new to you sale’ selling clothes, toys and books cheaply to firstly help parents buy items for a very reduced price compared to shop prices and to raise money for Weston Food Bank. Some of the money was also used to support our sponsored child in Kenya to have an education. They raised £200.
Educating for courageous advocacy is really about supporting the children to become agents of change and allowing them the opportunities to put ideas into action to tackle injustice in the world on behalf of those who cannot be heard. In this respect, we are very excited to announce that we have started our journey for the Christian Aid Global Neighbours Bronze accreditation.
Reflection areas
Within each classroom, there is an area for quiet reflection where children can sit and reflect and develop their spirituality. Each one is individual depending on the staff member who created it. Children add their own thoughts and comments to the class reflection areas. Children write their own questions and add their prayers. 
We are currently developing spiritual areas outside where children can sit and be still amongst nature.
Developing Spirituality
The children explore a variety of opportunities throughout the curriculum which help to educate and develop their spirituality. We aim to teach our children to reflect , consider and question and develop their spirituality by using the UP , IN and OUT approach. Please see the link below for more details.
Children are encouraged to look UP( window) in their devotion to God through prayer and worship . They look IN (mirror) as they care for themselves and others around them and they look OUT (door) with love as they try to help others and tackle injustice in the world as well as looking after the world that God created.
Children have reflection journals where they spend time after a focussed period thinking about a particular value reflecting on the impact it has had on their attitudes and behaviours.
Our six values are:
Term 1: Thankfulness (to coincide with Harvest time)
Term 2: Respect
Term 3: Friendship
Term 4: Forgiveness (to coincide with Easter)
Term 5: Trust
Term 6: Service
Our youngest children in Busy Bees have been reflecting on how precious our planet is. They made up a song to tell others to look after our planet during their free play. Great advice Busy Bees! ‘Life is all you get. Look after everything that is living. We have to look after our planet. No one knows we are home. Be kind and all your dreams will come true. Look after everything that is above and below. This is the best world. No one sees this earth…our planet…listen to your teachers. Life is happy with dreams. Look after all the plants. Take time to look at the plants. We need to water the trees and the plants.’ Busy Bees have also helped to look after our spiritual garden by planting daffodil bulbs to help the early bees to find food in the Spring.
