Another wonderful visit to Christ the King Primary School to approve IQM Flagship status. It was fantastic to see the progress the school continues to make to ensure inclusion is at the heart of its practice. It is a wonderful school which staff, pupils and parents love and are overwhelmingly proud of.
Christ the King is not a school which stands still. The commitment to school improvement is impressive. Staff and pupils adopt a reflective approach and have a shared vision for the school. The values are lived and evident in all aspects of school life. Standards are embedded in Reception and pupils understand what it means to be safe, respectful and responsible, both in and outside the school environment. Pupils are proud to demonstrate these virtues. The school is outward-looking and committed to the development of pupils as global citizens.
A display of ribbons near reception was a moving record of a day of prayer for the Middle East during which, pupils were encouraged to share their thoughts and ask questions. There are wonderful displays representing pupils’ learning from work on their core texts. On my learning walk we visited a class being led in a signing song by British Sign Language (BSL) staff. The concentration as they signed the words was remarkable. Year 2 had their headphones and were engrossed in ‘Now Press Play’ experiences which have been carefully chosen to bring their curriculum to life and facilitate an interactive learning approach.
Another class were illustrating a rainbow of peace. One child had written the message, ‘stop the war, share the love.’ Another was simply entitled ‘joy and love’. Classroom furniture is carefully arranged to ensure the different needs of the children are met and that they have access to the resources they need to be able to access the learning. The wide range of learning styles was commented on as a strength of the school by the pupils I spoke to.
Diversity and equality are evident throughout the curriculum. There has been a clear focus on the quality of texts to ensure diverse authors, illustrators and content, context and setting. In History, the Lead has looked at diverse individuals of all genders and people with different social standing throughout history. Pupils examine how the event or events impacted on them. Links across the curriculum are strong and meaningful. Year 6 were studying the text letters from the Lighthouse set in World War Two, their History topic and are also linking this to events in Liverpool. The Opening Worlds Humanities curriculum has contributed to this widening perspective. Mirrors and windows are key themes throughout the curriculum. All children can see themselves represented in texts but can also look outside the school and their community and see other contexts and differences.
Each half term starts with a text for PSHE as the first lesson and these have been carefully chosen to raise issues of acceptance and to celebrate differences. Through simple stories, these picture books raise important issues around gender, relationships, different families, diversity, morals, respect, equality and acceptance.
The text in Year 4, where two Aardvarks do not communicate, illustrates that there is more that unites us than divides us and that you need to ask questions and show an interest in others. It helps children come outside the bubble of their interests and talk more about wider topics. This in turn introduces them to other interests, broadens their horizons and opens other doors.
The children spoke enthusiastically about the value and enjoyment they get from the school-themed weeks and days. How Odd Socks Day taught them about what bullying looks like and what they can do or ask others to do so that in their words they are “not a bystander”. Work on challenging gender stereotypes has been done with each year group and children now have a greater understanding of discrimination and its potential impact. They have changed their language and understand how comments ‘for fun’ made now could become misogynistic behaviour in the future.
A lot of the work the school has done through Rights Respecting and values embedded across the curriculum has contributed to the current application to be a School of Sanctuary. The school is committed to developing the children into global citizens. This excellent proactive approach has ensured the school is developing accurate vocabulary, understanding and empathy. They have collaborated with Liverpool’s Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service (EMTAS) and completed staff training around Diversity.
Asylum Link Merseyside has delivered whole school assemblies and activities with each class to raise awareness of the plight of children fleeing their homes. These were designed to foster empathy and understanding through stories, focus on the use of language around refugees and how to ensure refugees have dignity. The messages around respect were powerful and the impact locally made it very relatable to the children. “We can now do and say the right things”, dispelling myths and stereotypes. During Refugee Week in June, the school plans to do a food bank-style collection.
The school is a UNICEF Rights Respecting School and was accredited with the Silver Award on 23rd July and is currently working towards the Gold Award. Staff visited another school who have the Gold Award to share best practice. One idea they implemented was for the School Council to choose a UNICEF article for each month based on children’s rights. One of these was, the right to be protected from war and violence. The pupils told me all about the article of the month which they discuss alongside ideas on how to implement it.
These are used in a Philosophy for Children (P4C) style lesson in each class as a stimulus for discussion. The school is currently establishing adults as ‘duty bearers’. They must ensure children have everything they need. Each class has a Class Charter linked to articles they have specifically chosen which they feel are the most pertinent to them. Under these, the children have stated what they can do as a yearly promise to achieve the articles and what the duty bearers, the teacher in this instance, can do. The children at Christ the King understand their rights and those of children globally.
An area of inclusive practice chosen to develop this year by a member of staff on the SENCo course was speech, language and communication. They looked at several packages to support this area and settled on NELI. The training and rollout of this highlighted a wider group of children with needs that had not been previously obvious. This in turn has improved early identification of need.
The research has led to all resources and areas of the classroom being labelled with a picture and a word to support visual identification and reading. Staff are more concise with instructions, ensuring that these are simple, broken down and accessible to all. Staff are chunking lessons, varying learning styles and the spaces used in the classroom. There is a consistency across the school in the way staff are teaching. Staff speak highly of training and the value of colleagues modelling best practice for them. An inclusive practice document sharing best practice has been compiled and the staff will add to this following the twilights organised for the day of my visit. Staff will share their learning around their SEND performance management objective.
Another member of staff has now started the SENCo course which will in turn drive another area of SEND forward. The school has engaged in the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme provided by Liverpool Local Authority in collaboration with Leeds Becket University’s Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality. Staff have valued the training designed to challenge thinking about anti-racism, race, colour and language.
All LSAs run an extra-curricular club and the offer is responsive to pupils’ interests. Around 60 children who attend choir are preparing for an upcoming concert. If children are not attending a club there is a proactive approach with families to remove barriers and listen to the child. Parents continue to have nothing but praise for the school. They describe communication and the mechanisms for sharing information as outstanding. Parents are well-informed and have the background knowledge to be able to support the messages at home and make meaningful connections with their child’s learning.
It is clear at Christ the King that every voice is valued and every voice is heard. The school actively seeks out voices that are not always heard.