The Church of England

Ethos and Values

We are a small, caring church of England school where all pupils are valued, nurtured and encouraged to achieve their full potential.  Children are given the opportunity to develop their skills and talents through our exciting and creative curriculum.

All pupils are supported through our programme of nurture and counselling. Effort in all areas of the curriculum and for all children, is rewarded and self-esteem and self-worth are raised.

Links with parents are established early through a programme of pre-school to school readiness. All learning is seen as a partnership between pupils, school and respect for all, by all, is of the greatest importance.

At Benington C of E Primary School, we are courageous advocates in what is best for members of our community, locally and nationally. Please read more about this in our courageous advocacy document.

Courageous AdvocacyPromoting British values at Benington School

Big Questions

At Benington we encourage children to think about the world around them by asking questions about what they see, hear and experience. Humans have been asking ‘big’ questions for millennia: ‘How did the world come to be?’, ‘What happens after we die?’ and ‘Is there a meaning to life and, if so, what is it?’, to name just three. Many such questions are central to religions and worldviews, meaning that RE is a natural place to explore big questions and responses to them with pupils. We use Big Questions in collective worship and circle times to start discussions.

Open-ended questions have no right or wrong answers, but help to broaden children’s thinking processes, to develop their speech and language skills, and to build confidence in their ability to express themselves using words.

Collective Worship 

We come together as a whole school to pray, learn more about the bible, sing hymns and reflect. Our worship monitors complete an evaluation of each session. We also say Grace before lunch. We finish worship and the school day by saying, “God be with you.” All KS2 children learn the Lord’s prayer. We also use liturgical language with the children and have the correct colour cloth on our worship table to reflect the church calendar.

Every classroom has a reflection area. These areas give us a place to focus our thoughts, reflect and pray. We can reflect on our Christian values or consider our thought of the week or Big Question.

We link each value with our SMSC (Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural) education.

The following gives us an understanding of how our school has based its ethos on the Church of England’s views on education in a church school.

Character education requires learning and development to be set into context against an understanding of what it means to be human and how the world works. While lists of virtues and values can be a helpful way of assisting people in understanding what character education may look like in the classroom, these are insufficient without a coherent and rigorous sense of purpose underpinning them. This sense of purpose will, inevitably, be culturally specific, rooted in particular communities and their beliefs and practices.

The Fruits of the Spirit – A Church of England Discussion Paper on Character Education Executive summary

The Church school offers a spiritual and moral basis for the development of human wholeness and a sure foundation for personal and social values based on the person and ministry of Christ. The Church school offers a distinctive language for understanding life and interpreting human experience. As a community of faith, the Church school should, in its best expression, reflect the nature of the Trinity, a life shared and defined by reference to others. Here we can begin to discover who we are, why we are, and – perhaps most importantly – what we might be.

The Way Ahead, Church of England Schools in the New Millennium