At Beenham Primary School we pride ourselves on our positive relationships.
We are a Values based school and treat each other with mutual respect and work in a climate where openness, trust and inclusion lay the foundations for our Values to be built upon.
The Dalai Lama said:
Developing compassion you feel much happier within—more calm, more peaceful—and other people respond to that. Through anger, real peace, friendship, and trust are impossible, but through love we can develop understanding, unity, friendship, and harmony — this is valuable.
Values Education underpins all aspects of school life and gives staff and children the opportunity to discuss and reflect on the Values in life that they believe in. It is our Values that determine our thinking and behaviour and the way in which we interpret the world around us.
We aim to help children learn the art of reflection and questionning to enable them to make sense of the world around them. We teach them to be understanding and solution focussed rather than judging others and getting cross. By the time children leave Beenham Primary School, they understand that Values are important if people in our society are going to live happily together, in peace and harmony.
A VALUES based philosophy in school enables children to:
be happy and feel loved and cared for
be confident and have a high self esteem
live in a climate of delight and positivity
be highly successful in their own right
be truly creative
make a difference to the world through who and how they are
develop good relationships with a wide range of people
develop a maturity of thinking
experience the thrill of and a thirst for learning
have self respect and behave responsibly
be resilient and learn through being able to overcome challenges
We focus on a set of core Values: Responsibility, Quality, Care, Resilience, Respect and Co-operation. These are all underpinned by Independence. Every half term we focus on each value in turn and explore it in depth. We base our assemblies and Personal, Social and Health Education (PHSE) on each of the different Values. We also use Values to guide us in our learning and look for every opportunity in our topics to find out about Values in the context of the wider world, and also to practice them in context.
We use a dolphin as a symbol for our Values work in school. This has been chosen because a dolphin can swim in all depths of the sea. It is said that they have great charisma and get on with most other sea life. They are friendly yet determined mammals who swim fast, work hard and sleep very little. They have lots of energy. They are such resilient creatures.
Each half term we award our wooden dolphin to the child in the school who has shown the greatest perserverance in demonstrating the Value of the term. The children themselves, write the criteria for the award, basing it on their learning and understanding of each VALUE.
The DOLPHIN AWARD is one of the greatest accolades in school. The award ceremony is usually very moving and children view those who achieve it in
The school was awarded the Values Kite Mark in March 2013 in acknowledgement of it being an outstanding Values-based school.
For more information about Values Based Education, click on the links below.