As a church school, we value our links with St Mary's Church, the heart of our community, and the support it provides. 

The ladies from the church visit the school regularly to engage with the children and support their learning. Each year, they help the children to make Christingles and Mothering Sunday Posies, and they encourage the children to attend church to be part of these services. The school is always represented at the Remembrance Service in church, providing a wreath to be laid at the memorial in the village. 

Our annual Christmas Carol Service and Easter Service are both held in the church, and always prove to be popular with the local community. 

We organise an annual Harvest service in church in October and the children bring in items to be donated to the Downham Market Foodbank. 

Religious Education

Religious Education is taught in accordance with the Norfolk Agreed Syllabus. In each year there is a focus on Christianity, as well as the opportunity for pupils to learn and evaluate their own views on other world religions.

RE enables pupils to appreciate their own and others' beliefs and cultures, helping them to develop a clear understanding of the significance of religion in their own area as well as in the world today.

The curriculum for RE is designed to ensure religious literacy lies at the heart. Being religiously literate means that pupils will have the ability to hold balanced and well-informed conversations about religion and world views. Pupils will be able to make sense of religion and world views around them and begin to understand the complex world in which they live. A multi-disciplinary approach to curriculum design provides a balance between theology, philosophy and the human/social sciences.

Collective Worship

As a Church of England School, collective worship is at the heart of the school day. All are welcome in worship and it is a time in the day that we can all be together to consider spiritual and moral issues and to explore our own beliefs. Through our collective worship we aim to develop a community spirit, promote our shared values, and reinforce positive attitudes.

Each act of collective worship will include time for thinking, sharing, listening and reflecting. We consider these elements to be the basic ingredients of any good act of worship. We use the four part model of ‘Gathering, Engaging, Responding and Sending’ in our collective worship, with liturgical greetings.

Each half term we will focus on a different Christian Value. This is done explicitly through our Collective Worship time, but also throughout our curriculum. Children will have regular opportunities to reflect on each value and to develop an understanding of each value in action. We will celebrate children who demonstrate these values in our class reflection areas and in our celebration assembly each Friday. 

Our Christian value for this half term is thankfulness. 

We have Worship Ambassadors (Amelia, Evelyn, Eric and Oliver) who help to organise, prepare and lead Collective Worship. 

Pupils are actively involved in worship.

Daily worship may be led by staff, children or visitors to the school. These worship times have a theme and include stories, songs or hymns, prayers and a time of reflection. We follow the Christian calendar and celebrate special days and festivals throughout the year. 

Prayer and reflection on deep questions plays a key role in our worship. Our School Prayer is regularly shared in collective worship, as is The Lord's Prayer.

Parents have the right to withdraw their child from Collective Worship if their own religious beliefs make this necessary. If you wish to withdraw your child please contact the Headteacher.

Courageous Advocacy

Courageous advocacy is the act of speaking out against an issue of injustice, often on behalf of those whose voice is not heard. We have recently been gifted a special trophy from Ely Diocese to be awarded to an individual child or group of children at the end of the school year who have demonstrated courageous advocacy. We will be encouraging children to think of issues they would like to speak out against and supporting them to become courageous advocates. Here is a photo of our new Courageous Advocacy trophy.