Our Catholic faith is at the very heart of our school and is evident as soon as you step through our doors in what you will see, hear and feel inside St Mary’s. Despite the many changes that the school has seen since 1928, the teachings of the Gospel and the links to the Catholic Church have been central to the mission and work of our school.

We are very fortunate to have our Church – Our Lady of Perpetual Succour – on site and our close link with our parish is very important to us.  Our school chaplain is the Parish Priest, Father Goodman. Please view our parish website: http://www.ourladyofperpetualsuccour.com/

All of our assemblies, prayer services and daily acts of collective worship in class throughout the week are rooted in the teachings of Jesus and often based on the Gospel readings of the day.

St Mary’s serves a vibrant multicultural and multi-faith community and care and respect for individual differences is very much at the heart of our ethos. This is emphasised regularly throughout the day in our curriculum as well as in our daily practices.

Our curriculum and school culture is based on the teachings of Christ and children are taught to become kind, respectful, forgiving and caring young people through the use of our Catholic Pupil Profile. Great care is taken to make links between the Gospels and our day to day behaviour and treatment of others.

Jesus is at the heart of our school and as such we welcome and value equally all members of our school community, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

The RE curriculum which we follow is based around the strategy ‘Learning and Growing as the People of God’ – developed by the Archdiocese of Birmingham.

We expect all children to participate in various RE activities and we always try to provide opportunities for children to lead and participate in prayers, readings and singing, whatever their religion. We embrace the culture and heritage of all children within our school and follow a planned programme of work based on wider religion.

The importance of prayer is evident throughout school. The children are encouraged to learn set prayers for the beginning and end of the school day, together with grace before and after meals and traditional prayers of the Catholic Church – please see our prayer booklet for further details. Parental support in promoting prayer is very much appreciated. Children are also given reflection times during their classes where they can lead and reflect on prayer where they feel is appropriate.

We celebrate Mass as a whole school in our Church at the beginning and end of each half term. Individual classes in KS2 also attend Mass on a weekly rota basis. Fr Goodman celebrates regular ‘Services of the Word’ with our younger children in our school hall and parents are very welcome to join the children at Mass or Services of the Word.