St James’ CE Primary aims to provide a broad balanced curriculum for the education of the whole child. We are committed to ensuring that every child is provided with high quality learning experiences which will enable them to thrive academically and emotionally.

As a Church of England school, we place a significant emphasis on developing our learners’ spiritual, moral and social understanding which is primarily addressed through our six Christian values.

We encourage our children to live and learn together in a community, encouraging care for others before themselves and to become responsible, independent people. We want our school to be a safe place in which mistakes can be made, learned from and – when appropriate – forgiven.

This links to our Christian values: compassion and forgiveness.

We help pupils gain an understanding of a wide variety of religious values and cultural traditions whilst continuing to celebrate Christian beliefs and practices, and we teach pupils the importance of respect for one another. We want to promote our pupils’ sense of identity; we do this through teaching knowledge and understanding of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages of Britain’s diverse society and of the local, national, European, Commonwealth and global dimensions of pupils’ lives. We want everyone in our school to understand and appreciate their own and different beliefs and cultures, and how these influence our communities.

We help our children to learn more by thinking and questioning, and in turn to gain a greater understanding of the world in which they live.

As well as feeling proud of their own personal achievements, we want our pupils to understand and appreciate the variety of human achievement and aspirations.

Our curriculum promotes skills and knowledge that include improving pupils’ own learning and performance and working effectively with others. At St James’, we recognise that our children must be able to initiate, engage, persevere and reflect in all their learning. Working with others is a life-skill that will help to prepare our pupils for their future. Just like adults, children need to be able to cooperate and compromise, agree and sometimes constructively disagree, help others to learn and learn from others.

This links to one of our core Christian values: perseverance.

We want children at St James’ CE Primary to understand the importance of personal responsibility in relation to their own learning, and to others’.

St James’ CE Primary School works within the context of Christian belief and practice, and understanding of shared values. We celebrate the diversity of the wider community and are committed to the principles of inclusion and equality of opportunity. We aim to ensure all children are valued, nurtured, protected and challenged regardless of race, colour, faith, gender or ability.

Our curriculum prepares our pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life. We promote pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and, in particular, the differences between right and wrong, and that we have rights but also responsibilities. We want everyone in our school to be responsible and caring citizens who make positive contributions to communities.

This links to our Christian value of compassion.

St James’ CE Primary School serves its community by working in partnership with parents, the church and other groups and organisations in Wetherby and the wider world.