Saint Joseph’s Catholic Primary School - The Borough

Welcome to Saint Joseph’s Catholic Primary School. As a Catholic School, this too is our Mission. We want all of our children to love learning, achieve well, develop a spiritual dimension to their lives and be able to form positive relationships with others. Parents are the first teachers of their children, so as a school we look to work in partnership with families to help, guide and nurture the children in our care.

At Saint Joseph’s our priority is to ensure all children feel protected and safe. We strive to maintain and develop an atmosphere of love and trust and respect for all the different people who make up our community. We are a small multicultural family, welcoming, joyful and relaxed; a family of faith, ready to meet each other’s needs.

Saint Joseph’s is a one form entry, multicultural, Catholic primary school situated off Borough High Street in the ‘shadow of The Shard’.

Although we serve a mainly Catholic Community, we also have children of other faiths and of none. We are very much a ‘family’ community where there is respect and understanding of all the different people, whatever their background, who make up our school family. Over thirty different languages are represented in the school.

Our children are and adults in school strive to set positive role models for the families who make up our community. We are an inclusive school, working together as a team to ensure each child achieves their best.

And the child Jesus increased in wisdom, stature and in favour with God and men. Such an understanding of the meaning of the life of every person born into this world offers the model for everything we do at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Primary School.

More importantly, we try to keep a feeling of love and trust and respect for all the different people who make up our family. We are a small mixed team, welcoming, joyful and relaxed; a family of faith, ready to meet each other’s needs.

The power we seek is to know the wonders of God’s world. It is fun to discover, learn and explore. We are all special with our own gifts and talents. We try to bring out the best in ourselves and in everyone. We never give up on anyone.

We look beyond our school to our homes, to local people, to local schools and workplaces. We are happy to show and to share what we ourselves love the most. In all this we look to the future: we need help to become more independent to prepare us for whatever life will give us and ask of us.

As a Catholic school our Catholic identity is very important to us. Throughout the year we celebrate the Liturgical Year as a school community and we try to involve our families wherever possible. By helping our children to understand the Catholic Christian traditions, they learn to respect and understand the beliefs of other world faiths.

Church Feast Days are also celebrated in school with either Mass or a non-Eucharistic liturgy. St Joseph’s feast day is a particularly special day of celebration marked by a liturgy and a ‘treat’ for the children.

Each class has a Prayer space which is decorated to reflect the liturgical year and there are class prayer books which the children take in turns to take home and write a prayer for school. Prayers are said daily at the start of the day, lunch-time and before the children go home at the end of the day. Individual classes also take turns in preparing whole school assemblies or a liturgy for their parents. Years 4,5 and 6 celebrate a Class Mass based on some recent RE work that they have been studying.

Jesus shows us what it means to be fully human. Our curriculum is planned to enable the children to develop to their full human potential: physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, each according to his or her ability and age.

As a Catholic school, Saint Joseph’s has a special role to play in the education of young Christians. Our approach to religion does not seek to “compartmentalise” but rather tries to get children to see God at work within the context of the children’s everyday lives. Our Religious Education teaching uses the ‘Learning and Growing as the people of God’ programme which is taught from Year 1 to Year 6.

In the Foundation Stage areas of learning are taken from the National RE Curriculum Directory and taught through the termly topic. Therefore we aim to provide a broad and balanced curriculum which offers the best education for our children. And since ultimately everything relates to God, every part of the curriculum has a spiritual dimension.

In the Foundation Stage (Nursery and Reception), the curriculum is organised into seven areas of learning.

The characteristics of effective learning are key to planning for the Foundation Stage. These are: Playing and Exploring (willing to have a go and find out); Active Learning (concentrating and keep on trying) and Critical Thinking (problem solving / finding new ways to do things).

The learning in Key Stages 1 and 2 follows the National Curriculum (2014). Teachers plan an exciting and stimulating curriculum in order to promote active learning. A variety of learning styles are used to encourage independent and group learning and to developing thinking skills.