British Values

At Stoke Heath Primary School, we want to fully prepare our pupils for a life in modern Britain. To effectively achieve this, we provide our children with a robust curriculum, which incorporates PSHE, RSE, RHE, SMSC Education (social, moral, spiritual and cultural) and British Values. This has been written with the Equality Act of 2010 and Keeping Children Safe in Education at the heart of everything we do.

The British Values are:

Democracy

Rule of Law

Respect and Tolerance

Individual Liberty

British Values are embedded in our school and evident in all of our school policies and staff training. This includes our child protection and safeguarding policy, anti-bullying policy, behaviour policy, SEND policy and ‘prevent’ training for staff.

It is our duty to actively promote British Values, which includes challenging any pupils, staff or parents who may say or do anything which goes against these fundamental values.

At Stoke Heath, children learn about democracy during our house captain annual vote and through our school council where all pupils in our school, have a voice and a chance to vote for change in the school. We also create opportunities to discuss democracy in other areas of the curriculum, such as in Year 5, when pupils learn about democracy in Ancient Greece.

Our PSHE lessons equip our children with knowledge and skills to become good citizens and learn about the British Values, moreover, they are assimilated in the wider school life. Our whole school assemblies promote British Values, citizenship and character education and link directly to the week’s PSHE learning. An example of this was during a whole school assembly about protected characteristics and discrimination. The assembly promoted respect and tolerance and individual liberty.

We also discuss behaviour which is underpinned by the value, ‘Rule of Law’. Our curriculum subjects, such as RE, promote respect and tolerance whereby children learn about different religions. Children are given opportunities to go to varying places of worship and respect is also learnt within RE lessons. Our whole school also celebrate a wide range of religious celebrations such as Diwali, Eid and Christmas.

We celebrate a ‘Best of British’ week every year where we celebrate any British current events such as the Queen’s jubilee or the King’s coronation. We use this week to celebrate heritage and to promote the British values.

At Stoke Heath, our behaviour policy advocates British values. Our own bespoke values are:

· We are learners

· We are inclusive

· We are honest

· We are respectful

Our behaviour policy is built around these values and based on a restorative approach. We aim to promote being good citizens and making correct decisions which affect themselves and others. Children are encouraged to take responsibility for their behaviour and learn from their choices by promoting empathy and considering consequences for their actions. Our star of the week assemblies reward and encourage our children to abide by these values.