As a Church Voluntary Aided Primary School, Christ Church works hard to develop and sustain the school’s Christian distinctiveness.  We work in close partnership with the Christ Church which shares our school site. 

What can you expect in a church school? 

Birmingham Diocese Church Schools are rooted in a Christian ethos while welcoming all children, families, and staff, regardless of faith. They nurture holistic development—spiritual, intellectual, emotional, physical, moral, and social—valuing each child’s unique worth as part of God’s creation. With a commitment to high-quality education and staff development, they aim to equip pupils with knowledge, skills, and values to transform society for the better. Emphasising community, service, and inclusivity, these schools seek to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and inspire young people to live with purpose and compassion. 

Inclusion and celebrating our diversity. 

We warmly welcome families of all faiths and none. While our Christian ethos is central to our identity, we also celebrate and value the rich diversity of our local community. We seek opportunities to learn with and from one another—whether through sharing prayers and celebrations from different faiths, exploring family traditions, or understanding cultural heritage. As a church school, our Religious Education curriculum teaches Christianity in every year group, but we also ensure pupils learn about other world faiths and beliefs. By making connections between values and ideas across traditions, we aim to nurture respectful, compassionate, and understanding young people.

Our Christian values 

Christ Church Primary School is built on core values that shape our community. Each half term, Collective Worship focuses on a different theme designed to support children’s social, moral, emotional, and spiritual development. Our key values—success, happiness, inclusion, nurture, and enrichment—are explored in ways that highlight their distinctively Christian meaning. Alongside these, the Christian values of Compassion, Hope, Community, Dignity, Peace, Joy, Wisdom, Courage, Forgiveness, Friendship, Generosity, Justice, Perseverance, Respect, Service, Thankfulness, Trust, and Truthfulness are woven throughout daily school life and the wider curriculum. 

Religious Education 

Religious Education is a core subject at our school and is timetabled weekly. Children learn about Christianity using the resource Understanding Christianity and we follow the Sandwell Syllabus. As a Church School, although Christianity forms the major study in Religious Education lessons, we have a duty to foster an accurate and increasing understanding of other religions and world views. Our curriculum enables pupils to think for themselves about British values in relation to their own values, the values of different religions and world views. Children are taught knowledge, understanding and skills to enable them to experience the fullness of life and gain the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to handle questions raised by religion and belief. As a result, our pupils gain a greater insight into the world in which they are growing up.  They are also able to appreciate the faith of others and develop a deeper understanding of their own beliefs and practices.  These outcomes contribute to harmonious relationships within and between communities, promoting social inclusion and combating prejudice. 

Worship 

Collective Worship is a highly valued part of the school day as it is the time when we gather together to affirm what is important to us, to our school and to our world. It provides an opportunity for pupils to worship God, whilst seeking to be relevant to, and inclusive, of all. It reflects our Anglican tradition as well as exploring with pupils and staff a variety of ways in which Christians worship God. 

Acts of worship in our school are predominantly and overtly Christian. However, as there are children from a variety of faiths and none, in addition to children from Christian homes, we draw upon religious material from a variety of traditions when preparing collective worship so that all are included and celebrated. We aspire that all of our worship sessions are inclusive, invitial and inspiring. 

We have daily Collective Worship in the school hall and classrooms. Children play an important part in leading and evaluating this including planning. Please see our collective worship page and Worship Council page for more information. Children regularly reflect and feedback on collective worship through our collective worship floorbooks. 

Celebrating with parents 

Every alternate Friday, Early Years and Key Stage 1 or Key Stage 2 have celebration Collective Worship where we gather and invite parents to celebrate the work children have done in school.  

Worship with the community 

Throughout the year, we celebrate major Christian Festivals through our worship. These include: Harvest, Remembrance, Christmas and Easter. We also hold our ‘Year 6 Leaver’s Service’ at St Philips in Birmingham. Prayer space activities take place throughout the school, for the children and the community.  

Worship Council  

Our Collective Worship Council was initially set up in 2016. The Collective Worship Council aims to help plan, lead and improve Collective Worship across the whole school.  

At the beginning of the year, pupils are elected by their class to become a member of the Worship Council.  As a church school, we want to help everyone to feel successful, happy,  included, nurtured and enriched whilst learning about and worshipping God whilst celebrating the multiple faiths and diversity of our community. 

Each half term the Worship Council meet together to do some of the following things:  

• Reflect upon worship and how it can be even better. 
• Help plan collective worship sessions. 
• Help monitor and evaluate the different worship sessions and the school environment 
• Learn more about worship e.g. why worship is important and the different ways to worship 
• Contribute ideas for prayers. 
• Help set up and maintain our Prayer Hut 
• Explore ways to develop the distinctively Christian character of Christ Church 

Each year, priorities of the Collective Worship change.  Some of our aims for the coming year are for us to: 

• Develop pupil participation in collective worship 
• Lead and evaluate worship consistently 
• Help ensure collective worship is diverse 
• Explore what is meant by spirituality 

Prayer and spirituality   

Spirituality  

To talk about spirituality is, essentially, to talk about something which is beyond words. We open conversations and explore spirituality using the concept of wows, ows and nows. These are used to explore relationships with ourselves, others, the wider natural world and beyond and offering the invitation to relate to God. Children reflect regularly using our Five Finger Examen, considering questions such as: What has been good today? Have I seed signs of God today? Do I need help with my promises and responsibilities? Do I want to ask God for help with them? and What little change can I make? Do I need to say sorry for anything? 

The School Day 

Children pray regularly throughout the school  day. We say our school prayer,  the Lord's prayer and Grace regularly. We encourage prayer inside and out and throughout the curriculum. Children are encouraged to write their own prayers and use the prayer boxes in their classrooms. Prayers are shared through the newsletter and in collective worship. 

Prayer spaces 

We have prayer spaces throughout the school,  inside and out. These are quiet spaces in which children can come to talk, pray and reflect. Children of all faiths attend and everyone is made to feel welcome.  

Worship area in class and the Worship class book 

Each class has a reflection area, in which is displayed the bible and artefacts which help children to reflect and pray. The colour of the cloth on the prayer area changes regularly, so that it connects with the different seasons of the liturgical year. Our Worship book is also on this table and has reflections that help children develop their values, understanding of themselves and others and also world faiths and views. It contains prayers, drawing and art work inspired by our learning and teaching.  

At Home  

To support and encourage prayer at home all children in each class have the opportunity to take the prayer bag home. Inside are various artefacts and items to support prayer such as a cross, candle and a praying teddy bear for younger children. Inside you will also find religious stories and texts. Each child is asked to write their prayer and bring it in to share with the class. Each class is chosen once every term to contribute one of their prayers for the school newsletter. 

Around the School 

We also have a dedicated prayer tree located in our entrance hall where pupils, parents, staff and visitors alike can write a prayer.