Our Ethos Group

Ethos Group

What is an Ethos Group?

•  The group is comprised of up to 8 Key Stage 2 children who have expressed a commitment to become involved in the core Christian values of the school.
•  It supports the school in developing its Christian values and distinctiveness.
•  It reports to the Senior Leadership Team and governors on what it has discussed.
•  The work of the Christian Values Group is recorded in the School Development Plan and all its meetings are minuted.

What does it do?

• The group meets regularly with Mrs Finney and Mr. Thomas to discuss aspects of the school’s commitment to its Christian ethos and values.
• It asks pupils their opinion about the schools values and worship.
• It takes an active role in collective worship and, with the help of Mrs Finney, plans and leads one act of Collective Worship every half term.
• It tries hard to develop the spirituality within school by celebrating examples of Christian Values in action throughout the school.  

Christian Values Consultation

There was a consultation with our school community on what our core Christian Values should be. Children, parents, staff and governors voted for the 9 that they thought were most meaningful to our school.

Here are the 9 values and a definition of what they mean.

Love – Love is a strong feeling of affection. It is a deep affection, fondness, tenderness, warmth, intimacy, attachment, or endearment.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

As a church school we seek always to show the love of God to all and our Collective Worship are times filled with love and joy that everyone can experience, whether they share our faith or not.

Compassion – Compassion is sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. It is pity, sympathy, feeling, fellow feeling, empathy, understanding, care, concern, solicitude, solicitousness, sensitivity, tender-heartedness, soft-heartedness, warm-heartedness, warmth, love, brotherly love, tenderness, gentleness, mercy, mercifulness, leniency, tolerance, consideration, kindness, humanity, humaneness, kind-heartedness, charity and benevolence.

Matthew 14.14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. We seek always to look beyond ourselves and our own school and be involved in the wider community, through initiatives such as the Foodbank and the Macmillan coffee mornings, as well as other charity fund raising events.

Forgiveness – Forgiveness is the action or process of forgiving or being forgiven. It is pardon, absolution, exoneration, remission, dispensation, indulgence, understanding, tolerance, purgation, clemency, mercy, pity, leniency and quarter.

Jesus was uncompromising in his command to forgive – Matthew 18.21 Forgive, he said, ‘seventy times seven’. In other words, forgive and keep on forgiving without limit. Forgiveness was at the heart of everything he did and is at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer. We forgive because we are forgiven. Ephesians 4.32 Paul says: ‘Be compassionate and kind to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.’

Joy - Joy is a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence and hope. It is something or someone that provides a source of happiness.

The word joy appears 88 times in the Old Testament in 22 books; 57 times in the New Testament in 18 books. John 15.11 Jesus said” I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete”.

Respect – Respect means having a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements, and having regard for the feelings, wishes, or rights of others.

Jesus always held others in the highest regard and thought of others before himself regardless of their obvious abilities, qualities or achievements, or lack of them, but pointed out that God sees what is inside a man’s heart and does not look only on outward appearances. We should therefore respect everyone regardless of their differences, culture or beliefs.

Kindness - Kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Someone who does kind acts, good deeds, acts of kindness or good turns offers acts of assistance, service, help, and aid.

The Bible has much to say about kindness and all Christians are called to be kind in an extravagant way with Jesus as our example. Jesus himself said in Luke 6.34-35 “³⁴ And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. ³⁵ But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”

Responsibility - Responsibility is a moral obligation to behave correctly towards or in respect of another. It is demonstrating trustworthiness, level-headedness, rationality, sanity, reason, reasonableness, sense, common sense, stability, maturity, adultness, reliability, dependability and competence.

We all have a responsibility to respond individually to the Gospel message. John 3. 18-19 ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

Honesty - Honesty is the quality of being honest by showing  moral correctness, uprightness, honourableness, honour, integrity, morals, morality, ethics, principle, (high) principles, nobility, righteousness, rectitude, right-mindedness, upstandingness.

Psalm 15 describes the person who is able to come into God’s presence as: ‘He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, and speaks the truth from his heart … who does his neighbour no wrong and casts no slur on his fellowman …who keeps his oath even when it hurts…’ (Psalm 15:2-4). The Psalm ends with the words ‘He who does these things will never be shaken’ (Psalm 15:5). This sort of uprightness and integrity is a source of great strength that will see the person through all forms of adversity.

Integrity involves a commitment to truth and truth is such an important thing that ‘the truth’ is often used in the New Testament as the name for the whole gospel message of Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Jesus reveals himself as being ‘the way, the truth and the life’ (John 14:6). The Holy Spirit is called ‘the Spirit of Truth’ (John 14:17). Being committed to truth is not a restriction. As Jesus says in John 8:32, ‘the truth will set you free.’

Perseverance – Perseverance is persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.  It is persistence, tenacity, determination, resolve, resolution, resoluteness, staying power, purposefulness and firmness of purpose.

In the Bible, the word ‘perseverance’ seems to occur most in phrases where a person is facing adversity. Often the story tells of people facing something that seems to be pushing them beyond their own resources and then God reminds them of the support and strength that is available. Perseverance seems to be much more closely linked to trust than to self-reliance. It is still perseverance. It is still difficult. It always requires stepping out into territory that is unknown and open to risk and often doing so alone. It was shown by Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Paul and, most of all, by Jesus. It was very hard for them to do what was required, but the strength came from a trust that what was being done was right and that they would be supported by God.

Love; Compassion; Forgiveness; Joy; Respect; Kindness; Responsibility; Honesty; Perseverance.

Together with the following verse from the Bible these have been incorporated into our Core Values Tree in the Main Entrance Hall and the Christian Values group will be working to develop displays around the school thorough the year.

‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’. Philippians 4.13