We welcome you and your child to the family of St Joseph’s, We are a one-form entry Catholic Primary School, with full-time nursery and reception classes, situated in the heart of London, just off Drury Lane. Christ is the reason for our school, the unseen but ever-present teacher in our classes, the model for our children, and the inspiration for our staff. We delight to be a living part of the body of the Catholic Church, convinced that our school can truly succeed only if there is a partnership between the school, home, and Parish.
We have high expectations for all children and work hard to ensure that they meet their full potential by delivering a broad and rich curriculum that provides children with the opportunity to explore, enquire and reflect at each stage of their learning journey.
Whilst we acknowledge the crucial role that schools play in a child’s development we believe that the most important teachers in a child’s life are their parents. We therefore actively encourage parents to involve themselves in the learning of their child and the life of our school family. We aim to provide a welcoming atmosphere, which encourages parents to come and discuss any matters concerning their child’s progress and welfare.
A mission statement says what the school promises to do for its children and what we must do for each other.
In our family we care for each other, learning together through Jesus. Our Mission statement says that we are all special and every one of us is part of the family of St Josephs’s. Our Mission statement expects us to care for each other. Our Mission statement says that we are all learning together every day and expects us to do our best so that we and others can achieve our full potential. Our Mission statement encourages us to communicate with our friend, Jesus through prayer and to love each other as he loves us.
The St Joseph’s curriculum aims to provide our children not just with the knowledge they need to move confidently and successfully through their education and to be prepared for later life we wholeheartedly promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental, and physical development of children will need to live happily in our society.
Our curriculum takes into account the needs of different groups, including the ablest and pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. We provide an inclusive curriculum that offers challenges and success in fair measure to all children.
Teachers are encouraged to innovate in all that they do. Every topic, lesson, and objective has its roots with the children for whom it has been planned. The rigorous assessment ensures sustained progress for all.
We have adopted the phrase ‘the romance and the rigor’ of a child’s time at St. Joseph’s. For us, the ‘romance’ is the creativity, the awe, and wonder, the discussion, and inquiry. The ‘rigor’ is reaching the ambition we hold for every single child our commitment to the highest expectations evidenced in every classroom every day, and expert planning and assessment that ensures learning is deep and secure.
We support creativity with our staff in deciding how to contextualize, extend, deepen and embed the curriculum and learning experience. This gives our children a rich and enjoyable school life, that equips them with both the very best standards on the transition to the next stage of their education, and a love of learning that considerably improves their life chances.
Whilst we follow the guidance of the National Curriculum, this is by no means the totality of our school curriculum. Learning is closely linked to the world the children live in – starting with the community they inhabit in the very heart of London a city that has been home to some of the greatest writers, artists, musicians, and architects the world has known. Great artifacts of world history are housed in the museums that surround us. The National Gallery and The British Museum are moments from our school, as are the Royal Courts of Justice and National Archives. All other London museums and resources are within the possibility of an easy day trip. We make regular use of every one of these resources to enliven learning for our children, and kindle those fires!
More than this, our school is also surrounded by universities, the offices of huge multi-national corporations, law firms, and the media world. These play a big part in the children’s learning from debates led by an Economist journalist and writing workshops in boardrooms to joint choir www.health-canada-pharmacy.com performances with a law firm’s choir from reading volunteers from some of these organizations to maths clubs mentored by finance directors children regularly access all levels of the world around them. We hope this stirs a belief among them that they can interact with this world, and the door to it is very much wide open.
