Catholic Life of the School

We hope that the Catholic Life of our school is evident from the moment that you come into contact with us. Our school building , our website and the people in our community reflect our Christian values and we know that this is one of the main reasons that families choose to send their children to our school. We are proud to be a Catholic School and we hope that everyone who visits feels welcome. We are proud of our community and know that everyone in it feels valued and respected. When things go wrong we place great emphasis on respect and forgiveness, we know that it is ok to be sad and we try our best to support each other through difficult times.

Religious Education is, obviously, a big part of our school life and is treated as a core subject. We ensure that each class fulfils the Diocesan recommendation of 10% teaching time and we follow the Bishop’s chosen scheme of “The Way, The Truth and The Life” in a creative way. RE is so much more than just lessons at St James’ and it permeates everything that we do. We help our children to translate their faith into their daily life.

Prayer and Liturgy is an important part of what we do and who we are. We say prayers together, we prepare liturgical prayer sessions and have liturgies in a variety of different ways at different times and in different places. We have whole school Masses and class Masses, teacher led assemblies and child led assemblies, we reflect on our own, in groups, in classes or all together. We make music together and sing together, we pray together, we listen,  reflect and respond to scripture. Sometimes our worship is loud, colourful and  joyful and at other times it is quiet, meaningful and reflective. We take our lead from the church’s liturgical year.