Our school aims to serve its community by providing an 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 to all its pupils.

Values

At St. Nicholas CE Infants’ School we uphold and nurture our Christian ethos by encouraging the following six distinctively Christian values:

Respect   Friendship   Love   Forgiveness   Perseverance Thankfulness

Our vision and values are at the core of everything we do. They underpin teaching and learning and provide an environment which nurtures our school family, helping everyone to become the best they can be.

Religious Education

Religious Education (RE) is a statutory subject, and all statutory school age pupils, in all schools should receive a high quality education in RE. Here at St Nicholas we begin teaching RE in Reception. 

RE plays a central role in our broad and balanced curriculum. It enables pupils to participate fully in a multi-religious and multi-secular world. It aims to enable young people to hold informed and balanced conversations about worldviews, religion and beliefs. It provides a safe environment where pupils can explore their own ideas and learn to evaluate the opinions of others. Whilst a greater emphasis is placed upon the Christian faith in RE in church schools, it is important that young people experience the diversity of lived religion and worldviews. 

Our RE Policy can be found on our policies page, please follow the link below. 

The Right of Withdrawal

Pupils may be withdrawn from RE or part of RE by a parent or guardian in accordance with Schedule 19 to the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. However, we hope that all parents and carers will feel comfortable with the type of religious education being taught at our school.  Parents who wish to withdraw their children must provide written notification to this effect and provide suitable activities for their children. The school will keep pupils safe but will not provide any work or reading material for pupils who have been withdrawn.

Collective Worship is a key part of St Nicholas life, offering us the valuable opportunity to be together for a daily act of worship focussing on our school vision and values. Importantly worship must be inclusive and invitational to pupils and staff of all faiths, beliefs, or none. It's a special part of the day that helps us to feel connected and to understand that we all belong in the St Nicholas Family. Worship aims to offer moments for reflection as well as opportunities to inspire. 

The children value worship and love the chance to participate, for example by being chosen to share the values pebbles as we open collective worship. 

Each term our worship is themed around one of our six core values and how it helps us with our vision of becoming the best we can be. The timetable below shows how we typically structure worship across the week. Children delight in our celebration worship, it's a proud moment when you're mentioned in the 'becoming the best we can be book'! 

Spirituality

Our language of spirituality begins from a Christian understanding that everyone is a valued creation, individually and uniquely made by God, like pots made by a potter (Isiah 64:8). This ties in with our vision, Becoming the Best We Can Be, And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:31

In life, things happen that impact on the physical 'pot' of life and create cracks that provide a glimpse of something beyond the tangible. 

Cracks may be caused when something so good and breathtaking happens that the pot expands and cracks – the wows of life.

Cracks may happen when something challenging happens and threatens the comfort of everyday –
the ows of life.

Cracks can also happen in the stillness and ordinariness of everyday – the nows of life. A moment of stillness, a pause or prayer can create a crack in the normal, physical everyday.

The Golden Glue - In these special moments there is a spiritual opportunity. Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with golden joinery or glue, creates something that has been broken into something differently beautiful and even more valuable. Using this metaphor, the wows, ows and nows of life offer the possibility of becoming cracks that are filled with gold, adding significance and value to life. In all these moments, there is an opportunity to invite God to be involved in making sense of these experiences.

Copyright © Diocese of Gloucester. All rights reserved.
Written by Debbie Helme with Joanne Wetherall

St Mary-le-More

St. Mary's Church is located in the market place in Wallingford. We have a close and valued relationship with the church. Rev Sarah Nesbitt visits school regularly to lead Collective Worship and serves as one of our Local Governing Body members. 

As well as welcoming Rev Sarah to school, we love the opportunity to visit church both for services such as our Year 2 Leavers' Service and for trips to enhance our RE curriculum teaching. We also enjoy taking part in church events, for example Family Services and collaborations with the Church Choir. Children were delighted to play a part in the recruitment of Rev Sarah, interviewing her for her role as Team Rector.