Behaviour and Ethos

St John Rigby is a community based upon the strong Catholic virtues of Faith, Hope, Forgiveness, Love and Trust. The ethos of our school is that it promotes inclusion and the valuing of each individual, encouraging self-esteem, self discipline, and mutual respect.

Our mission statement lies at the heart of all we do and underpins our overarching core aims:

• To ensure God’s will is achieved by empowering our children to develop as happy, safe and respectful individuals who through faith formation are able to make informed choices that are in their own and others best interests.

• To enable children to work with a joy and love for learning, acquiring the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed to be successful in their own lives and understand how they can make a positive contribution to society.

• To enable children to play with an inquisitive and exploratory mind as they imagine, collaborate and create. They will take ownership of their learning journey and know that limitations are also opportunities for growth, showing courage to sometimes be wrong.

• To inspire children to grow, day by day, in their knowledge and understanding of the virtues to live by, developing traits of excellence through our core school virtues of: Faith, Hope, Forgiveness, Love, and Trust, and continuing to flourish and discover their unique God given potential.

Key Aim

Our key aim is to support children's social and emotional growth by creating positive relationships and supporting children to understand and analyse their feelings so that we can enable our children to thrive in a secure environment in which everybody belongs.

We actively seek to ensure our children’s main two microsystems, home and school, work closely together to build relationships and establish an environment (mesosystem) that:

i) supports our Catholic Character Education, Follow Jesus day by day, and

ii) ensures we are Ready, Respectful and Safe at all times.

Relationships and role models

Through strong relationships with our children, staff are a positive role model who take the time to know each individual, listen to their voice and commit to ensuring each child is valued and respected.

There is a focus on ensuring that children are coached and supported in self-regulation and developing positive relationships with themselves and others. This, in turn, supports our children in knowing how they should act towards one another.

Support in partnership with parents

We also recognise that the majority of our children generally behave very well and that ‘all behaviour is communication’, so when things are not going so well, we will endeavour to support children through these issues. Every effort is made to ensure children are not isolated or separated. This also involves staff and parents/carers working closely together, collaborating and supporting each other for the benefit of the child who is at the centre of all we do. As such, we expect high standards of behaviour, politeness, courtesy and co-operation from all members of the school community.