Attitudes and Values

Attitudes and Values

Personal

• Developing growth mindset [10]. Rather than simply praising success, we praise effort and persistence. We believe the best thing to do is to teach children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning. For children who find work easy we make sure they encounter more difficult tasks. Our children recognise that effort, persistence and good teaching are what help them improve.
• Developing intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy [11]. Throughout the curriculum we aim for the children to see themselves as readers, writers, mathematicians, artists, musicians etc. We want their motivation for them to work in this way to be down to their understanding of themselves and the potential they have.
• We recognise the responsibility we have for the physical development and the well-being of our pupils. Our approach to our curriculum aims to build self-esteem, a respect for self and others, kindness and resilience, with staff modelling across the curriculum how to deal with challenge and adversity. We also have a role to ensure that pupils learn about what they can do to maintain positive mental health, what affects their mental health, how they can help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and where they can go if they need help and support.  British Values permeate through the curriculum.
• Both the teaching of oracy and knowledge underpin the children’s ability in critical thinking [9].

Local, Societal and Global

• As an Inclusion Quality Mark flagship school, inclusivity is key to our culture as a school. Within the curriculum, we aim to celebrate difference and diversity.
• Sustainability is one of the key themes that is going to prepare our children for life in the future. Key questions about sustainability form central parts of our curriculum.
• The Rights Respecting agenda plays a key role in school life at Meadowside and provides a strong ethos to foster purposeful learning attitudes and positive relationships. This initiative underpins the school’s aims to provide a values-led curriculum. The children learn about their own responsibilities, through learning about their own rights and the rights of others, as set out by the United Nations Convention Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

PSHE is given a high prominence currently to help us to address any mental health and wellbeing support that our pupils might need and respond flexibly to issues that are affecting the pupils at any one time. These are planned using guidance from the PSHE Association ensuring compliance to statutory guidance. Personal, social and emotional development is taught in discrete lessons, on special celebration days and also through assemblies, as we seek to develop the whole child. British Values are addressed through PSHE but we also look for ways to address these more explicitly across the wider curriculum and in assemblies.  We ensure the children have a good knowledge of their own rights and responsibilities, through learning about their own rights and the rights of others, as set out by the United Nations Convention Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and actively encourage the children to engage in community action to see the difference they can make in these issues. We continue to ensure that our pupils build the cultural capital that they will need to be a confident member of our community. We are building up a programme of enrichment for all subject areas.  This could take the form of extra-curricular clubs, school trips or visitors/renowned scholars/authors coming to school or zooming classes.  The purpose of these is to cement and add value to the existing curriculum.

Our meadowside mindeet encompasses the principles of Growth Mindset and Self-Efficacy.

British Values Statement


At Meadowside CP & Nursery Primary School, ‘British Values’ permeate throughout our curriculum and daily life to support the development of the ‘whole child’. We recognise that development is most successful when those values and attitudes are promoted by all the staff and provide a model of behaviour for our pupils

‘British Values’ have been identified as:

Democracy - The importance of language is central to our curriculum and a significant emphasis is placed on oracy and vocabulary acquisition. The ability to communicate is the most important area of learning, so we ensure that pupils are given a ‘voice’ to communicate.

We empower our pupils by giving them opportunities to make choices about the things that they believe to be important. By valuing each ‘voice’ and by listening and responding to that voice we demonstrate that we support democracy and liberty.

 

Rule of Law: - As a Rights , Respecting School we involve pupils in deciding their class charters, setting codes of behaviour; helping pupils to make decisions and choices that are acceptable to the school community and society at large. Pupils are helped to learn to manage their behaviour and take responsibility for their actions. Staff are committed to providing a consistent and predicable environment within the school and beyond. We can help some pupils to understand the connection between actions and consequences. This type of environment enables pupils to feel safe and secure; this in turn, promotes the optimum conditions for learning to take place.

 

Individual Liberty: Pupils are encouraged to become good and valued citizens. We do this by supporting each pupil to become as independent as possible. We endeavour to demonstrate that everyone has rights; this includes the right to say ‘No’ when appropriate. Some pupils will be able to take responsibility for particular roles and to understand that with certain rights comes a level of responsibility. Learning to do things independently is an important part of learning to understand yourself. We support others by participating in local community and national events and charitable events, such as Children in Need, and Local Charities. We believe that by engendering a caring and helpful environment and by learning to be independent can boost and nurture a healthy self-esteem.


Mutual Respect: As a school awarded the IQM Centre of Excellence, we strongly promote each pupil’s inclusion. Events are planned for pupils to go into the community to meet with a range of people in a variety of situations, which include: sports events, community events and shared participation with other schools.

 

Tolerance of different faiths and beliefs: We know the importance of teaching our pupils about a multi-cultural society, so that they respect and value people equally without regard of ability, gender, faith, heritage or race. Cultural appreciation and development forms part of our curriculum. We place great emphasis on providing encounters and participation in events and celebrations to broaden all pupils’ experiences and awareness of others. Our curriculum helps all pupils ensure they find out about themselves and others linking their lives to the communities in which they belong, aswell as British Culture. We take part in local sporting activities which helps to instil ‘fair play’ and engender a ’team spirit’. For example, children have the opportunity to participate in a variety of sporting competitions. The staff work closely with parents, carers and other professionals to ensure that the pupils school are happy, well cared for and enabled to learn the skills they need to live a fulfilling life as part of their community.