Our Vision
To create a trusted community where everyone feels they belong and we all play our part so that our children are free to explore, love learning and grow confident in who they are, ready to take that with them into the wider world.
“At Freshford, learning is put into a fun and unique way. You learn about yourself and others, and as it is a small community, everyone is more than a classmate. You never have any trouble finding friends. You learn to believe in yourself more and become your own person.”
Year 6 pupil.
Our Values
The Freshford Church School values of ‘Care‘, ‘Believe you can’ and ‘Cheer each other on‘ are at the heart of all we do in our community as we work towards our vision.
Our swifts and values encapsulate what we endeavour to open the children’s hearts and minds to each moment of every day. The words of these values were drawn from listening to the stories of children, staff, parents and carers as they described what made Freshford a special place and experience for them. Thus ‘Care’, ‘Believe you can’ and ‘Cheer each other on’ powerfully express the heart of our school and can be seen, heard and felt by all who are a part of, or visit, our community. We believe they shape and so remain with a Freshford child for the rest of their lives.
What makes Freshford special?
All we do as a community is lived through our values of ‘Care’, ‘Believe you can’ and ‘Cheer each other on’. These values were drawn from the stories that were told in describing what makes Freshford ‘Freshford’ – stories from the children, the teaching team, office, kitchen and site staff, as well as the parents. It is true to say our values are aspirational, but they are encouraged, lived and felt first hand in the everyday moments and experiences.
Through our carefully planned Big Question curriculum, we have shaped a learning journey that best suits our community and our mixed class structure. We ensure that the children’s journey through the school is about growing understanding of the world and cultural capital grown through, rather than by ticking off, the National curriculum; it is about thinking, connection and questions rather than a list of facts; it is about making learning meaningful, exciting and owned by the learners themselves.
The work the children create communicates their passion for learning, their belief that everything they do matters both to them and to the adults in our community. We build opportunities to share the learning in big and meaningful ways whether through ‘Let’s Share’ and their mastery pieces that draw together thinking from right across the curriculum, whole school week-long residencies at the American Museum to build exhibitions of the work for the museum visitors and to present the active learning to parents, or Shakespeare dance, drama and creativity and a myriad other varied opportunities that enable the children to communicate and re-present their thinking.
As educators, we believe that the very best lessons are ones where we listen to child voice in order to guide the learning in the moment as we want to ‘learn with’ and not ‘do to’. We believe that all the children are all our children and we strive to deeply know, understand and care for them all. We leave no stone unturned in pursuit of robust foundational learning for every child so that all can flourish in an atmosphere where expectations are ‘high ceiling’ but the invitation across the threshold is accessible and inviting. These are the secret ingredients to our consistently outstanding results.
Our children and the community of families who choose to bring those children to our school every day are what make Freshford special. The sense of purpose, creativity and diversity of play at breaktimes speaks volumes for a community that believes childhood is precious and should be lived to the full.
When children leave Freshford, I know they take with them a sense of self, a joy in learning, the feeling of having been known, celebrated and loved for who they are. In short: they carry the Freshford values in their heart as a bedrock for their futures.
Though our school be but small, our perspectives are wide and far reaching.