Brookburn’s Core Values
Academic Excellence
This value captures all aspects of our curriculum and the achievements of our pupils. We believe strongly that every child has the right to the very best education and deserves a curriculum that is fun, engaging and inspirational. We aim to aspirational for our children. Academic excellence is about supporting every child to achieve based on their stage of learning. It is not only about helping children break boundaries and reach or exceed age related expectations, but it is also about ensuring that any child, no matter what their background or barriers to learning may be, have the opportunity to be as successful as they can be and to have staff who act as cheerleaders and do everything they can to support their progress.
Respect
So important in all that we do, we believe that it is our responsibility to work with you as our parent community to support all children in learning about respect, tolerance and kindness to all. This aligns with our Unicef Rights Respecting agenda but is also embedded across our curriculum and through our assembly foci as we explore themes and ideas that celebrate diversity. We believe it is vital that children are taught to appreciate and celebrate all individuals, irrespective of race, gender, religion, background and sexual orientation. We want to nurture tolerance and acceptance for future generations.
Supporting our children’s physical health is incredibly important. This involves the quality of sports provision on offer to our children, but also includes how we provide additional breaks for movement (e.g. the daily mile), time to play in our school grounds and how we promote our healthy schools agenda. We aim to provide balanced and nutritious school meals and have now returned to our full lunchtime offer after a difficult period during the Covid-19 pandemic. We actively encourage car free travel to school, host school street closures, ask that children bring healthy snacks and provide fruit to all children in KS1 and EYFS.
Global Citizenship
This value encapsulates so much of the work we do with children teaching them about their place in the world and the impact that humans are having on our planet. Not only do we aim to ensure children have a grounded understanding of the history of our world and our place within it now, but also, their role as ambassadors, championing the environment and being aware of climate change and the impact this is having on our future. We aim to ensure children have an awareness of global events as they occur and are prepared to ask questions, develop perspectives, analyse and consider evidence and form their own opinions and arguments to support their journey on to future opportunities with confidence, compassion and awareness.
Mental Well-being and Mindset
A fundamental purpose of supporting children in Brookburn is to ensure that all pupils are happy, cared for and ultimately, feel safe, secure and confident in their surroundings. Without this, children will not thrive and we recognise that we have a large part to play in nurturing all children, supporting their mental health and enabling them to develop confidence, resilience and determination. Our pastoral leader, Ms Lowe, works full time out of class and in weekly Pastoral Care Team meetings, the health and wellbeing of pupils is discussed. Support can be offered to any family who needs it. Ms Nash, one of our TAs, has been offering play therapy whilst successfully achieving her Post Graduate Certificate in Therapeutic Play and a whole school focus is regularly placed on staff training to strengthen our understanding around mental health and attachment. As a leadership team, we are very mindful of supporting the wellbeing of our staff and have liaised with our team to make improvements to how they work in support of their health too. We are also working to improve our classroom environments to make them more nurturing and relaxed places in which to learn.
Creativity and the Arts
Supporting and nurturing creativity amongst our pupils is so important and something that resonates strongly within our very creative staff team. We aim to give all children the opportunity to appreciate and celebrate the arts, be it through dance, drama, music, art or design. Art as a subject is a key focus area for us as a school this year as we aim to further improve our offer to children. We ensure that every child (subject to global pandemics) is part of a performance each year, and are lucky to have the support of our PTA, who fund an artist to work across the school offering further opportunities to children.
