Jesus said, “I have come in order that you might have life—life in all its fullness.”      John 10:10

This is the vision upon which Pitton Church of England Primary School is founded.  We are committed to enabling each member of our community to flourish.  With the role model of Christ as our cornerstone, we are developing an environment where everyone can flourish and achieve their full potential.

At Pitton, we believe that spiritual development is a fundamental aspect of children’s personal progress that exists beyond faith or religious affiliation.  We work to enable children to develop holistically so that they become happy, fulfilled, spiritually aware and socially and emotionally engaged.

Spirituality is explored through Mirror, Door, Window and Sky Moments during Collective Worship and throughout the school day, e.g. within reading for pleasure. These moments provide opportunities for children to pause, reflect and think deeply about the world around them and their role within it. We also explore one spiritual question during each term’s enquiry. These have been specifically devised by teachers to deepen thinking and consider an aspect of the enquiry that extends beyond the National Curriculum.

Our shared understanding of Spirituality

The concept of spirituality as a "mirror, window, door and sky" provides a metaphorical framework for understanding the role of spirituality in our lives and how it relates to self-awareness, connection with others, and personal growth.

Spiritual Development Across the Curriculum

The wider curriculum also provides rich opportunities for spiritual development.  All members of staff highlight where learning experiences allow for spiritual reflection:

Physical Education: teamwork, pushing personal limits, skill and endurance, sportsmanship, emotional responses to success and accepting defeat, appreciation of perfection

Design and Technology: discovering how things work, ingenuity, beauty in design, perseverance, learning from others, personal achievement

Literacy: empathy with authors and characters, beauty of language, emotions in writing and speech, heroes and heroines, poetry, imagination, wonder, pleasure in creative process

Numeracy: concepts of infinity and zero, pattern and order, universality of mathematics, truth, certainty, and the wonder of numbers and formulas

Science: wonder and curiosity, questions of creation, experimentation limits, life and death, the universe, regularity and order, scientific beliefs and achievements

Computing: wonder of global communication, rapid growth of knowledge, accessibility of information and worldwide collaboration

Creative Arts (Art, Music, Drama & Dance): creativity, beauty, truth, expression of deep feelings and beliefs, skill development, emotional engagement, personal reflection, fulfilment, and transcendence

Geography: wonder at environmental diversity, care for the planet, understanding beliefs behind causes, world development, empathy with global communities

History: connection with past people, events, and ideas, handling artefacts, understanding significant historical figures, interpretation, empathy with people from other times, understanding invention and exploration.

The role of our School Community

All members of our school community have a responsibility for helping to nurture children’s spiritual development.

Our school staff do this through:

• Establishing and maintaining a partnership between pupils, parents and staff; recognising and respecting the faith background of our children and their families;
• Taking part in, and supporting, collective acts of worship;
• Being good role models in their conduct towards other members of the community;
• Promoting an attitude of respect for other people and for others’ views;
• Nurturing consideration for, and generosity towards, others.
• Drawing on the experiences of pupils and their families during religious education lessons and beyond;
• Recognising and being constantly aware of the needs and backgrounds of each individual pupil;
• Being willing to develop their own knowledge and understanding of the Christian faith and the faiths of others;
• Having a positive attitude to the value of spiritual education.

Our children do this through:

• Taking an active part in acts of collective worship;
• Participating in activities which promote engagement in, examination of, and reflection upon, religious belief and practice;
• Conducting themselves towards others considerately, in line with our school values;
• Respecting the views and beliefs of others.

Our families can help through:

• Adopting a positive attitude to the value of spiritual education;
• Supporting the school’s Christian ethos and acts of community worship, such as assemblies and church services;
• Respecting the views and beliefs of others.

Our school governors do this through:

• Supporting and developing the distinctive Christian ethos of the school
• Strengthening the links between church, school and Diocese.
• Taking an active role in the school’s self-evaluations of collective worship and religious education.
• Encouraging and challenging the school towards being aspirational.
• Ensuring that their own attitudes and behaviour in relation to the school reflect its distinctive Anglican and Christian ethos.

Supporting your child's Spiritual Development

The link below shows a short video which offers guidance on how to best support your child's spiritual development.

• A guide to Spiritual Development – A short video to help explain Spiritual Development.