SS Peter & Paul’s Working Towards Becoming a School of Sanctuary
This year, we are working towards completing an audit and action plan so that we can hopefully become a School of Sanctuary. Your support and input would be greatly appreciated and valued.
What is a School of Sanctuary?
- A School of Sanctuary is a school that is committed to being a safe and welcoming place for all.
- It is a school that helps its students, staff and wider community understand what it means to be seeking sanctuary and to extend a welcome to everyone as equal, valued members of the school community.
- It is a school that is proud to be a place of safety and inclusion for all.
Why is a School of Sanctuary important?
- To promote and develop a sense of safety and inclusion for all.
- To understand what it means to seek sanctuary.
- To provide learning opportunities around human rights, social justice and diversity.
- To increase student voice and promote active citizenship.
The City of Sanctuary’s organisational pledge is:
“We support the ‘City of Sanctuary’ vision that the UK will be a welcoming place of safety for all and proud to offer sanctuary to people fleeing violence and persecution.
We endorse the City of Sanctuary Charter, and agree to act in accordance with City of Sanctuary values and apply the network principles within our work (as far as our specific context enables us to).
We recognise the contribution of people seeking sanctuary. Sanctuary seekers are welcomed, included and supported within our context. We expect our branches or local groups (if any) to support their local City of Sanctuary group if one exists, and will facilitate contact between them and their local City of Sanctuary group.”
At SS Peter & Paul Catholic Primary Academy we have an incredible range of languages spoken within our diverse school community and we welcome children and families from many different countries. We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels welcome and part of your school family, a sense of belonging is important at SS Peter and Paul and as such we want to ensure everyone experiences a culture of welcome in line with our mission and vision for our school. Everyone at SS Peter should feel safe and a valued member of our school community. Our curriculum provides opportunities for children to learn about a wide range of cultures through stories, learning about world religions, through history topics, geography learning, knowledge of world artists & music, through assemblies and in PSHE & RHE lessons.
Children who speak English as an additional language (EAL) are assessed using a proficiency in English assessment, and those who need additional support are supported accordingly, following that assessment. We use resources written in a child’s home language, when necessary and we use specific mixed ability seating plans to help everyone, including new arrivals, in making progress with language acquisition. Our whole curriculum is oracy driven and at SS Peter and Paul we have well crafted ways and means of helping unconfident speakers find their voice. We hope to train up some of our confident and fluent English speaking EAL children to be young interpreters as part of our application to become a School of Sanctuary. Pupil Leadership is important at SS Peter & Paul and it may be that it is empowering for proficient English speaking pupils to support younger children, those children who are new to the country.
Over the next few months, we will continue to work through the audit to evaluate the good practice we have developed so far and consider all the ways in which we can become even more inclusive and supportive to all current and future pupils and families.
Should you have any questions or require further information, please see Mrs Byrne.
