St Cecilia's Catholic Primary School

St. Cecilia's is a Roman Catholic Voluntary Aided Primary School in the Archdiocese of Southwark. The principal objective of the school is to establish, maintain and advance the Catholic religion. It was built to serve the local Catholic community, in particular, the children of practising Catholic families in the parishes of St. Cecilia's, St. Matthias and St. Christopher's.

The school caters for children from three to eleven years of age. We have over 480 children on roll and fourteen classes, each of which is named after a Saint. At St Cecilia's, Religious Education is given priority; it pervades the whole ethos of the life and work of the school. We offer a wide curriculum incorporating the requirements of the National Curriculum. The Catholic community support the school because they value a distinctive Catholic Education for their children. A substantial amount of funding for the upkeep of the school is donated by regular churchgoers in these parishes through their regular weekly contributions at Mass.

As a Catholic School we have a unique place in the local community with very close links to our Parish churches. Our school community is a beacon of the Gospel Message, it is reflected in all that we do. We have an active programme of faith formation as evidenced in our recent Section 48 inspection which graded the school as "Outstanding."

At our school we place the person of Jesus Christ at the centre of all we do and because of this we value individuality and diversity and recognise the preciousness of every individual. However, we also value the joy of working and learning in a Community that is strengthened by common values and expectations. We recognise that each one of us has a special part to play in creating a better world and building up God’s Kingdom here on Earth.

St Cecilia's is a very happy and settled place, it has a great sense of tradition, many of our valued and much loved staff have taught here for many years and we are pleased to see past pupils return with their own children.Our pupils work very hard and show tremendous achievement in their results. Our pastoral care is outstanding, children are happy to come to school and enjoy the challenging and varied curriculum that we offer.

At St Cecilia’s we have a vision to create a school where learning is at the centre of everything we do so that our children can grow as individuals to become lifelong learners. We value the partnership between home, school and parish and recognise the benefit this has on your child’s learning because children’s behaviour and attitudes to learning like questioning, reasoning, resilience and perseverance are an important part of the learning process.

With the introduction of the new curriculum St Cecilia’s has adopted a cross-curricular approach which means that subjects are linked through topics. This approach enhances children’s learning by making the curriculum more rounded, meaningful and exciting. At St Cecilia’s we recognise the uniqueness of each child and their different learning styles across a broad range of activities and we aim to develop these so children make good progress and attain high standards. Subjects or areas of the curriculum that do not fit into a particular topic are taught discreetly.

To complement learning and bring our topics alive the children have regular access to practical learning experiences, often there are themed days or weeks; visits to places of interest in both the local and wider community and Y6 have the opportunity to go on a residential trip. Relevant visitors to the school, including parents, are always welcomed to assemblies, to speak to classes, year groups or larger groups to enhance the children’s learning and knowledge of the world around them.

At St Cecilia’s Catholic Primary School we actively promote Christian values, virtues and ethics that shape our children’s character and moral perspective based on the Gospel values and teaching of the Catholic Church. We are confident that this gives our children the awareness of what it means to be a good citizen in Britain today and embeds in them the skills to be an active citizen in the future as laid out in our vision statement.

Educating today's children to live fulfilled Christian lives as positive participants in tomorrow's world community. At St Cecilia’s we are committed to serving our community, our local area and beyond by promoting ‘The Common Good’. We are able to make real links between the values of our pupils and the lives of others and in doing so we reinforce British values regularly.