Courageous Advocacy at Salesbury

Vision Statement

Taking God’s word as our compass, we hope children develop ethics of excellence, becoming the best they can be while embracing new opportunities.

Our school is a learning community welcoming and celebrating diversity and personality. We create a curriculum which enables children to flourish holistically. Our days are designed to be tapestries of stillness, energy, ambition, challenge, reflection and fun!

Maximising our glorious surroundings, we seek to find learning indoors and outdoors revelling in the world God provided. Young leaders are nurtured, becoming the change they hope to see, using their voice, energies, gifts and talents to be a positive difference.

Our Vision incites children to seek justice. We encourage children to really open their eyes and look at the world in which they live and seek ways to make it a better world, a fairer world for everyone. We hope they can see a wider world, and develop a sense of otherness, a world beyond themselves.

The Christian Gospel says that every person has a unique task to do, with God, and for God, whether they know it or not. We hold and courageously advocate the conviction that there is something mysterious, and potentially wonderful, in everybody.

Salesbury Church of England Primary School nurtures courageous advocates who will play their part in making a difference, for noticing injustice and doing something about it.

We know and understand that life can be challenging at times and all people, including friends, family and global citizens will face difficulties that they need help with.

Together we have been and are supportive of a range of charities in our local area, nationally and globally. Some we regularly support and others are in response to matters raised by the children or local, national and global events.

Our Christian Values (Friendship, Courage, Creativity, Humility, Truthfulness and Service) alongside British Values (Rule of Law, Tolerance, Democracy, Mutual Respect and Individual Liberty) ensure that opportunities to discuss current world issues, to challenge injustice and to engage in social action are always present. Each week, we debate a question based on a current issue. This leads to much discussion, learning, further questions and action.

We have an Archbishop of York Project Group who work as a family group to challenge injustice, raise awareness within school and ensure a clear action and response. They are a very energetic and proactive group within school and have developed initiatives to enable fundraising and awareness of the need for clean water, donated school shoes to charity, made stationery packs for families for September, hosted a collection point for useful items for the homeless, collated Food Banks, raised issues regarding parking at school, adopted animals in danger of extinction, sent thank you cards for people in our community etc.

This year, each class has had a 'Big Question' to inspire children to be agents of change!

One of our Year 6 children was inspired to make a difference. He spotted that the local Food Bank had had its windows broken. He recognised Mrs Fourie, our Singing Teacher, who works hard for the Food Bank in the picture. Adrian decided to do a swim to raise funds to contribute to the repair. In addition to the swimming, he stood at the school entrance (in the rain) for the week to collect donations! Well done Adrian!