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Collective Worship

Acorn Education Trust (Dinton) Collective Worship Policy.

Our vision and values

Our vision and values are at the core of everything we do. They underpin our teaching and learning, and provide an environment which prepares our pupils as confident, happy citizens.

Our vision statement is:

'Encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing’ (Thessalonians 5:11)

Our values

  • Respect
  • Trust 
  • Responsibility
  • Friendship
  • Truthfulness     
  • Wisdom

Promoting Fundamental British Values

We aim to actively promote British values in schools to ensure young people leave school prepared for life in modern Britain. Pupils are encouraged to regard people of all faiths, races and cultures with respect and tolerance and understand that while different people may hold different views about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, all people living in England are subject to its law.

The Key Values are:

  • democracy
  • rule of law
  • individual liberty
  • mutual respect
  • tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs

 

Collective Worship is centred around the following:

  • Engage in an act of community.
  • Express praise and thanksgiving to God.
  • Be still and reflect.
  • Explore the big questions of life and respond to national events.
  • Foster respect and deepen spiritual awareness.
  • Reflect on the character of God and on the teachings of Christ.
  • Affirm Christian values and attitudes.
  • Share each other's joys and challenges.
  • Celebrate special times in the Christian calendar.

Overview

Collective Worship is also the key fulcrum for whole school conversation about the school’s vision and values, how they are enacted when they aren’t being fulfilled, why, and how that can be remedied. Alongside this it is a vehicle for the exploration and understanding of Spirituality. It is always inclusive, invitational and will, at least, always work towards being inspirational.

The school gathers for Collective Worship with the Head teacher first thing on a Monday morning. During the rest of the week worship is used to close the school day as part of a reflective act celebrating what has been achieved.

Collective Worship is undertaken daily.

At core Collective Worship should follow a distinctive pattern:

  1. Light - a candle or equivalent as an expression of Jesus being the light of the world – light against darkness.
  2. A welcome that reminds children why they are here where we share our opening prayer
  3. A story – often biblical based
  4. A short song
  5. The lead adult (usually Headteacher) discussing what the story means in the context of the school, its values and what might be happening within the school community.
  6. A pupil who has engaged well with the worship theme is selected. They will start to read the theological underpinning of our values – ‘Encourage one another, and build one another up.’ The rest of the school community helps them to close, by reciting, ‘just as we are doing.’

All members of staff are involved in Collective Worship, but, at core, it is about the conversation of the Head with their school.

As a school, the majority of acts of worship are taken from the Simply Collective Worship Scheme. This scheme runs on a 4 year cycle.

Principles

  1. Through the corporate worship of God, the school's mission is celebrated and advanced. The Academy Council and Board of AET recognises that Christian collective worship is a fundamental tool in the promotion of students' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
  2. Whilst reflecting the breadth of the Anglican tradition, collective worship is consistent with the practices and doctrines of the Church of England.
  3. The principal objective is to enable all worshippers of whatever tradition, faith or world view to reach the 'threshold of worship’. To achieve this all collective worship should be imaginative, inclusive, accessible, well and thoughtfully planned, and appropriate to the students, context and occasion.
  4. A variety of students, staff, visiting clergy and external organisations should be involved in the creation, organisation and leadership of worship so as to provide students with a wide experience of what constitutes Christian Worship as well as the Worship approaches of other Faiths, as well as the expression of spirituality through no particular faith.
  5. It is expected that all staff will actively demonstrate their support for the faith tradition of the school by participating in collective worship as their duties permit. 

Aims

The core aims of collective worship at The National Church of England Academy are to:

  1. Enable students and staff to explore and celebrate the diversity found in the worship traditions of the Church of England.
  2. Provide opportunities for students and staff to engage with the cycle of the Christian year and to celebrate the key Christian festivals.
  3.  Help students and staff to explore and develop their own spirituality and faith in ways that respect the diversity of the school community.  
  4. Encourage students to reflect upon the relevance of scripture and the doctrines and traditions of the Christian faith for their own lives, decisions, attitudes and behaviour.
  5. Seek to deepen and widen the experience of those of 'faith’ and encourage those of 'no faith’ so that they begin to feel for themselves something of what it means to to reflect on reverence and awe.
  6. Use a wide variety of worship and music styles, methods, symbols, liturgies, vocabularies and resources to engage students as fully and as regularly as possible.
  7.  Reaffirm, strengthen and demonstrate core Christian values (e.g. love, peace, compassion, forgiveness, self, giving).
  8. Celebrate the God-given talents and gifts of each individual member of the school community acknowledging their uniqueness as people made in the image of God.
  9. Nurture and encourage respect and care for God's created world by promoting a positive attitude to environmental issues locally nationally and globally.
  10. Develop a sense of community within the school and foster a concern for the needs of others.

Responsibility

  1. The Trustees of the Acorn Education Trust have the responsibility for ensuring that the school meets the requirements for worship detailed in the Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools (SIAMS) Evaluation Document. They delegate this responsibility to the Academy Councils of each school. The Leader for Church School Flourishing in the Trust evaluates and ensures that Collective Worship is a developing strength in each school at an operational level.
  2. The Headteachers is responsible for creating and directing the programme for Collective Worship. This may be done through a scheme but must be tailored to reflect the school’s own specific vision. Values and spiritual journey.
  3. The Academy Council will be updated every meeting (four times a year) on (as with all other areas of Church School Life) the impact and structure of CW.
  4. In all schools a group of older children should be taking responsibilities involved with Collective Worship.
  5. The Head, through other staff, should be regularly gauging the impact of CW
  6. The Leader for Church School Flourishing will make the evaluation and impact of Collective Worship a key part of the termly visits carried out to each Church of England School.

Part of the distinctively Christian nature of Church of England Schools is that they should be as hospitable and inclusive to all in the community they serve. As collective worship occupies such a central place in the life of the Church school, this should be made clear on induction, and it is hoped that parents will be making a specific choice of the school knowing that the distinctive ethos will determine a Christian tradition within collective worship.

 The 1944 and1988 Education Acts state that parents have the right to withdraw children from collective worship and suitable arrangements should be made to accommodate these children. On occasions, a parent may make a request for their child to be withdrawn from Collective Worship. There is an expectation that parents wishing to request a withdrawal will meet with the headteacher to discuss their concerns and requirements. It may be helpful to establish:

  • The elements of worship in which the parent would object to the child taking part
  • The other aspects of school life that are impacted by the Christian foundation of the school such as prayer and reflective areas
  • The practical implications of withdrawal
  •  Whether the parent will require any advanced notice of such worship, and if so, how much

Where parents have withdrawn their children from collective worship and request religious worship according to their particular faith or denomination, the governors and head teacher will seek to respond positively to such requests providing:

  • Such arrangements can be made at no additional cost to the school
  • That the alternative provision would be consistent with the overall purposes of the school curriculum as set out in the Education Acts I
  • If the Parent asks that a pupil should be wholly or partly excused from attending any religious worship at the school, then the school must comply.
  • (This means that a parent may, for example, request their child does not take part in a carol service when otherwise the child takes part in daily collective worship.)