Living life in all its fullness! John 10:10

At St Mark’s, we believe every child is uniquely created, deeply loved by God and full of potential.

Our vision, Living Life in All Its Fullness, shapes everything we do. We want every child to flourish academically, socially, emotionally, physically and spiritually, becoming the person God created them to be.

What Does “Living Life in All Its Fullness” Mean?

We want every child to:

Feel safe, valued and loved
Discover and develop their unique gifts and talents
Achieve their very best academically
Build strong character and grow in their learning behaviours
Develop faith, hope and confidence for the future
See how they can influence our world for the better
Leave St Mark’s ready for the next stage of life and to change the world!

Everything we do, from our curriculum and collective worship to our pastoral care and enrichment opportunities, is shaped by this vision.

Our Four Ways to Flourish

We Value Everyone

Every member of our school family is important. We are proud to be an inclusive school where children are known as individuals and supported to thrive. Through nurture provision, pastoral care and our commitment to inclusion, we work hard to remove barriers and create opportunities for every child to succeed.

At St Mark’s, we believe in character before qualification.

While academic success is important, we also want children to develop qualities such as resilience, responsibility, courage, wisdom and compassion.

Our aim is to help children become not only successful learners, but good people, shaped by God’s love.

Our Learning Behaviours

We want our children to be excellent learners for life, and so we have 8 learning behaviours which are underpinned by and linked to our Christian values. They help to develop the skills needed for life-long learning, as well as the understanding of what that means. Whilst knowledge is interesting and helps us make sense of our world, we know that learning is more than gathering knowledge. We need to learn how best to learn, and our learning behaviours help with this.

We encourage children to use their voice to make a difference.

At St Mark’s, courageous advocacy means “Notice something, do something about it, and keep doing something about it.” Children learn about local, national and global issues and are encouraged to take action through projects, charity partnerships and community work. We want our pupils to leave us believing they can change the world for the better.

Rooted in Christian Values

Our school is rooted in our distinctive Christian values of love, forgiveness, hope and faith (click to find out why!). The basis of these values is God’s deep love for us. We hold these values dear, and weave them into our everyday life at St Mark’s. They make us who we are. Importantly, we teach and live out these values from a Christian perspective and understanding. They help us to understand ourselves and our relationships with others in the context of God’s love for us. They help us to have life in all its fullness!

Love

Love each other as I have loved you. John 15:12

God loves us all, and we show that love to ourselves and others. We live in community together in God’s love.

Faith

Faith means knowing that something is real even if we do not see it. Hebrews 11:1

Faith is what we believe and trust in. This shapes our choices and our lives.

Forgiveness

And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:32

God forgives us, and so we can show forgiveness to ourselves and others, and grow together.

Hope

I will bless you with a future filled with hope—a future of success. Jeremiah 29:11

Because God loves us and gives us hope, we have hope for ourselves and others. We can all thrive together and develop our interests.

What does this look like at St Mark’s?

Rich Curriculum

We desire our children to experience a full and rich curriculum which is irresistible for all children to learn and irresistible for all teachers to teach. We believe that excellent learning experiences underpinned by high quality teaching set in a highly nurturing environment are essential for children to achieve and develop well in all areas.

Inclusive

We are a fully inclusive school; we welcome children of all backgrounds, beliefs, cultures and circumstances. We recognise and celebrate our differences, too. As God loves us unconditionally, and made us all unique. Therefore, every single child and adult in our community is special. We believe this is at the heart of who God is. We understand the concepts of secure attachments, and aim to develop these for our pupils.

Community is key

We love to work with our whole community; indeed, we were made to live in community with one another. Everyone has a part to play in educating our children including parents, governors, staff, members of our local community, and organisations in our own country and around the world. And as we help our children, so we help one another and build a better, more richly-connected world. “It takes a whole village to raise a child.”

Agents of Change

We believe it’s crucial that our children see themselves as making a positive impact on our world. We help them to see themselves as Agents of Change, making our world a better place through their simple actions. This may start at school -in the classroom, on the playground, bringing a smile, sharing resources, or playing together. They also take action in the community and wider afield. Find out more here.

We Are One

Our world is amazing! We’re made up of many different cultures and races, colours and beliefs, interests and skills, abilities and challenges. We believe we are made in God’s image, and therefore our similarities and differences are reflections of God’s love and his world. We see these as reasons to celebrate our shared humanity. We need to help our children see the richness of the world and see themselves as part of our world. Whilst our school community may not represent the full tapestry of the world, we need to give our children experiences that do. We help our pupils to stand up for what is right, and see that whatever their own background, they can be equally happy and successful! Read more here.

Emotionally Healthy

We are acutely aware that the emotional health of our pupils is paramount. As part of their character development, we want our pupils to be emotionally intelligent, resilient and actively empathetic. We employ a number of strategies to develop this. More recently, we are using HeartSmart to help them understand and live out what we believe are excellent principles and practices for growing healthy hearts and minds. Unsurprisingly, the High Five statements closely match our Christian values, and demonstrate a memorable, practical outworking of them.

To find out more, please read our page on our Christian Values, Learning Behaviours and HeartSmart

Our Vision and Values