At Percy Shurmer Academy we currently have 445 pupils aged from 3 to 11 years. This includes 39 children in our Nursery and 10 Deaf pupils in our Deaf Learning Base (DLB). We have a large friendly staff including members who speak community languages, and we work closely with a range of outside agencies.
Our vision for the school is to produce responsible young people of whom we can all be proud, who have achieved more than they ever believed possible and who are prepared to contribute to their local, national, and global communities. The Department for Education states that there is a need “to create and enforce a clear and rigorous expectation on all schools to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” The government set out its definition of British values in the 2011 Prevent Strategy and these values were reiterated by the Prime Minister in 2014. At Percy Shurmer Academy these values are reinforced regularly.
Within school, pupils are actively encouraged to make choices, knowing that they are in a safe and supportive environment. As a school, we educate and provide boundaries for our pupils to make choices safely, through the provision of a safe environment and empowering education. Our pupils are encouraged to know, understand and exercise their rights and personal freedoms and are advised how to exercise these safe examples of this can be seen in our clubs, overnight residential visits, e-safety, and SRE, P.S.H.E. lessons. Whether it is through the choice of challenge of how they record of participation in our numerous extracurricular activities all our pupils are given the freedom to make choices.
Respect is one of the core values of our school and it is deeply embedded in our class rules and all that we do at the school. The pupils know and understand that it is expected and imperative that respect is shown to everyone, whatever differences we may have. The core value of Respect at Percy Shurmer Academy underpins our work every day both in and out of the classroom.
Our core value of Respect ensures tolerance of those who have different faiths and beliefs. Percy Shurmer Academy enhances pupil's understanding of different faiths and beliefs through religious education studies P.S.H.E. work visits to Churches, Mosques, and Temple settings. Beliefs, traditions, and customs will be studied in-depth, with visitors being invited into our school to enrich and extend understanding. Through this, our pupils gain an enhanced understanding of their place in a culturally diverse society.
We believe that children learn best when their learning experiences are evocative, therefore we deliver a challenging, in-depth creative connected curriculum. We endeavor to provide opportunities to apply their mathematical, computing, and English skills, which enables our pupils to become, confident, effective communicators. Our pupils are encouraged to develop curiosity and a hunger to find out more about our school's connected curriculum, underpinned by British Values, ensures that our pupils are fully involved excited, and stimulated by the learning opportunities provided. Thus, we strive towards our pupils leaving us as independent, confident, compassionate, and curious individuals.
We aim to:
- Enable pupils to understand how and why people behave as they do now.
- Enable them to understand themselves.
- Give them the confidence and ability to try to improve themselves and their world.
- Help them to develop a sense of responsibility for the world in which later generations will live.
- Enable them to ask and answer significant questions.
- Enable them to think for themselves and to reach fair and rational conclusions about complex human situations.
