St Aidan’s is a Voluntary Controlled Church of England primary school.

Voluntary Controlled schools are maintained and run by the local authority. They generally have a religious foundation which appoints some of the Governing Body. The local authority employs staff and controls admissions and curriculum; the school’s land and buildings are generally owned by the authority.

We are similar to community schools in that:

· the Local Authority controls our pupil admissions: children do not need a recommendation from the church or to attend the local church in order to be accepted at St Aidan’s;

· we follow a multi-faith assembly programme

· we teach a multi-faith Religious Education syllabus. This gives children an opportunity to learn and understand about all world faiths.

We are a Christian school which welcomes children from different faiths and non-faith backgrounds but we have strong Christian principles and we expect all children, staff and stakeholders (our parents, carers and Governing Body members) to respect them:

· our school values are based on the Christian values of tolerance, forgiveness, love and patience and form part of termly assembly themes;

· every class has a prayer corner / area;

· there is daily collective worship (as all daily assemblies close with a Christian prayer);

· all children attend Holy Trinity church for major Christian festivals, eg. Christmas and Easter;

· children sing a combination of Christian and contemporary songs as part of our weekly music assemblies;

· our children receive weekly visits from the priests in charge of the local churches, Holy Trinity and Holy Innocents, who lead the Monday assemblies.

Collective worship

An act of collective worship takes place every day in an assembly. This involves members of the school coming together and participating in prayer (which may be sung in the form of a hymn) or a moment of personal and spiritual reflection. These occasions are used to foster a sense of community and to reinforce the values of the school. Through different themes we reflect a broad spectrum of Christian belief. We would like all children to take part in all school activities but parents have the right to withdraw their children from collective worship if they so wish.

Download a pdf of ‘Understanding our VC status’

Download a pdf of our ‘Assembly and collective worship policy’