Days Lane Primary School

At Days Lane, developing the ‘whole child’ is at the heart of everything we do. The curriculum we have designed is underpinned by our core values to ensure that all children understand and demonstrate: Respect, Resilience, Responsibility, Community, Compassion and Excellence. This is embedded in all aspects of school life and supports children’s academic, social, moral, spiritual and cultural development, resulting in confident, well-rounded individuals that are questioning and curious in their approach to learning and life.

We believe that our children achieve ‘personal excellence’ through the teaching and modelling of our core values, which equip children with the key skills needed to become active, responsible citizens. Children quickly develop the sense of belonging to a tightly knit community where they have the confidence and skills to make decisions, self-evaluate, make connections and leave us as well-rounded young people.

Core Values

We created our core values in consultation with key stakeholders, and launched them across the school community through assemblies, parent letters and the introduction of our core value characters (Robo Respect, Reggie Responsibility, Rex Resilience, Colin & Cara Compassion, Connie Community and Elma Excellence), who represent specific value behaviours. In order to raise their profile we had the characters made into puppets, to provide a physical/ visual presence that children could relate to. The puppets are part of circle times, assemblies and visible on the school gates e.g. when children returned to school after the lockdown, to provide a stimulus and promote dialogue about our values.

Additionally, we created a story for each character related to their physical appearance e.g. Rex Resilience wears strong boots to help him step over obstacles and each character has linked qualities that are shared with the children verbally and in their Core Values Pupil Book. Please click on the link to read our core value character stories: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_egWCvreU1oCUyybxbNi_3-4XjQSjxfs/view?usp=sharing

Our core values are integrated into all aspects of school life:

• They appear on our learning flips to continually promote high aspirations e.g. referencing the behaviours of Elma Excellence’s, or to encourage children to demonstrate the attributes of Rex Resilience if they are finding learning challenging. The examples below are from this week’s early morning work flips during children’s registration:

• Weekly assemblies link to a core value character, which ensures that our value behaviours are continually referred to; this has helped to instil positive behaviours in our children. Please click on the link for an example assembly PowerPoint: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PQKl4O1By_QzY-gWS279HgkRxeYLsw9Z/view?usp=sharing
• The core value characters have also been integrated into our reward and sanctions systems:
  • Children receive stickers for demonstrating core value behaviours – the stickers have a picture of the core value character their actions relate to.
  • Weekly core value post cards are sent home to parents/children. This has motivated children to adopt our core values and promoted positive behaviour throughout the school as well as reminding parents about promoting our values at home.
  • Reflection forms ask children to evaluate their behaviour against our core values, so they are clear about which behaviours they need to improve.  

Aims:

To promote ‘British Values’ through our spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) education which runs through the curriculum and supports the development of the ‘whole child’.

We believe that the development of key personal and social skills, knowledge and attitudes will enable pupils to develop confidence and independence and make a successful transition to secondary school. We recognise that such development is most successful when those values and attitudes are promoted by all the staff.

‘British Values’ have been identified as:

Democracy: We ensure that pupils are given a ‘voice’ to communicate their views which are used to shape policies and practices at Days Lane. We empower our pupils by giving them opportunities to make informed choices about the things that they believe to be important. By valuing, listening and responding to pupils’ views we are recognising key democratic values and principles.

Our School Ambassadors and Pupil Leadership Team are composed of elected representatives from every class and bring pupils’ views and ideas to meetings for consideration and decisions on future actions such as fundraising for charities. 

Rule of Law: At Days Lane, we help chidlren to learn to manage their behaviour and take responsibility for their actions, which is underpinned by ouir Core Vlaue charcters Robo Respect and Reggie Responsibility. Staff are committed to providing a consistent environment within the school and beyond. We help pupils to understand the connection between actions and consequences with rewards and sanctions clearly communicated and understood. This type of environment enables pupils to feel safe and secure and promotes the optimum conditions for learning to take place.

Individual Liberty: Pupils are encouraged to become good and valued citizens. We achieve this by supporting each pupil to become increasingly independent as they move through the school. Pupils are encouraged to take responsibility for particular roles and to understand that with certain rights comes a level of responsibility. Class monitors, for example, are given specific tasks, whilst Pupil Leadership Teams and Eco-team representatives meet to develop wider school developments. Learning to do things independently is an important part of learning to understand yourself. We support others by participating in local community events and charitable events such as the Bexley Food Bank, Children in Need, Remembrance collections and supporting different charities. We believe that by engendering a caring and helpful environment and by learning to be independent can boost and nurture a healthy selfesteem; this specifically relates to our Core Value characters Colin and Cara Compassion.

Mutual Respect: Everyone is valued as an individual at Days Lane and encouraged to respect and support one another. We promote each pupil’s inclusion, wherever possible in all activities, settings and locations. Planned activities such as paired reading are planned to enable older children to meet with their younger peers and classes, whilst children's learning in our Ark provision are frequently included on parent newsletters to ensure that the wider school community are aware of their achievements.

We believe pupils, families and staff working together have much to offer in the development of mutual respect and community cohesion.

Tolerance of different faiths and beliefs: At Days Lane, we serve a multi-faith community where each person is respected and valued equally irrespective of gender, race, heritage or faith. Cultural development and appreciation is an intrinsic part of our curriculum. We place great emphasis on providing encounters and participation in events and celebrations to broaden all pupils’ experiences and awareness of others. As part of the RE curriculum, pupils learn about different faiths places of worship and children are given the opportunity to talk about their religious experiences through class discussions and school assemblies e.g. that foucs on EID. We also hold an annual Christmas carol concert at Days Lane Baptist Church, where our school chir and chidlren in upper KS2 retell the story of the birth of Christ to the local community..

Pupils are encouraged to experience British Culture through our curriculum themes. Children regularly participate in local sporting activities which help to instil ‘fair play’ and engender a ’team spirit’. Staff work closely with parents, carers and other professionals to ensure that the pupils are happy, well cared for and enabled to learn the skills they need to live a fulfilling life as part of their community.

As part of the school’s PSHE curriculum, we arrange for a school nurse to give an illustrated talk to Years 4, 5 children on the subject of personal hygiene and menstruation, as they approach puberty. These presentations can be found below.

In Year 6, the school nurse delivers a presentation on puberty with the following objectives:

1 To identify the physical and emotional changes that take place in puberty and how to manage them.

2. To list where information can be found when chidlren need it and know where to find it. 

Please note that all material is shared with parents in advance of the school nurse presentations. 

As per the statutory guidance, Days Lane teachers First Aid to KS2 pupils in the summer term to ... 

• Enable children to support their own and others’ health and wellbeing
• Enable children to make clear and efficent call to the emergency services
• Understand basic first aid concepts, for example, dealing with common injuries such as head injuries. 

Days Lane use the St Johns Ambulance plans to help prepare them to teach these areas of first aid.

How first aid activities are mapped to the National Curriculum: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xHvFZiAg1Oe-DVz-81SqH7Ampz_wctuQ/view?usp=sharing