Our Mission

The Arden Forest MAT is a community of schools with a Christian ethos where we strive to give all of our children the hope and aspiration to achieve their full personal and academic potential.

We are committed to promoting strong collaboration across the family of schools. Staff work collaboratively across the MAT and this approach allows us to share expertise, resources and best practice.

All schools have similar approaches to the curriculum with a commitment to developing the ‘whole’ child, not just being academically focused.

Arden Forest MAT Values

Governors and Trustees are committed to maintaining the Christian distinctiveness of the schools and have agreed that the purpose of the MAT is Inspiring Educational Excellence for Everyone. We will live out this vision through four core values:

Nurture

We believe in educating and caring for the whole child, not just academic excellence but physical and intellectual development united with spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. When making decisions, we put the needs of our children first ensuring that they and their families are valued and supported holistically.

Respect

We are committed to the dignity, value and well-being of each individual. We are tolerant and inclusive, we appreciate difference and need for change and embrace the views of all members of the community through Christian virtues. At Coughton we all follow the RESPECT Code. We all value and encourage each other to be our best selves – always.

Collaboration

At Coughton CofE Primary school we strive to provide an atmosphere in which we can all thrive together. Within every learning environment we use Teaching and Learning Partners (TLP); this facilitates learning in a symbiotic manner whereby partners actively assist each other in attaining their own learning  goals.  TLPs stimulate, promote and engage each student in effective problem solving, reflection, and other forms of higher order thinking with their partners. In doing so, a strong community may develop whereby frequent intellectual exchanges and stimulating academic discourse creates new understandings, not only between Learning Partners, but may also transfer over to the larger context of the classroom and school. 

Collective worship is integral to our Christian character at Coughton C of E Primary school. This is consistent, regular and at the heart of our school ethos.

Christian virtues and practice are at the heart of our school life and they underpin all that we do. Our distinctive Christian character is developed through every aspect of school life. We have strong, well established links with our local churches who contribute regularly to our worship programme and we enjoy opportunities across the year to worship in St Peter’s our local church.

Our aim is to provide a safe environment in which each child feels valued as unique and precious and in which each child can find security, acceptance, reassurance and an opportunity to flourish. We aim to create a caring and happy community in which Christian values are upheld. We encourage caring relationships between all members of the school community, characterised by Christian love, kindness, respect and trust, with a mutual concern for each other’s well-being.

Reflection areas, displays and artefacts are a constant reminder of our Church of England school status.

Each half term we explore a different Christian value to enable children to understand its meaning and look for opportunities to demonstrate the value and observe it in others.

Our Christian virtues and ethos influence our actions and how we treat each others in School. At Coughton we are on a journey to grow our ‘Learning Power’.  In other words, we are all learning to be better learners.

Our building learning power (BLP) is about helping young people to become better learners, both in school and out. It is about creating a culture in classrooms – and in the school more widely – that systematically cultivates habits and attitudes that enable young people to become better learners; face difficulty and uncertainty calmly, confidently and creatively.

There are four key learning dispositions, we focus on in school  – 

Perseverance	Reflectiveness	Resourcefulness	Reciprocity
Never giving up	Thinking carefully about our actions and our work	Being independent and knowing what resources are available	Being able to learn with and from others, as well as on your own.

We encourage a growth mindset and wish to inspire our children to demonstrate the behaviour learning powers through our Christian virtues. We will use BLP to develop our ‘Language for Learning’ in school and this will enabled us to engage all pupils in a dialogue using a common language to support and develop our understanding of how we learn. It is our intention that the children use the language for learning to explain ways in which they achieved or approached tasks and how they can move on to the next chapter in their learning.

We hope that this information helps to make you aware of the language we use and you can use the same language to discuss and support your child’s learning.