We are a Church School

Bodsham School is closely associated with the  nearby village churches that make up the newly coined term for this group of Churches; ‘The Parish Upon the Hills’. These include St Bartholemew’s in Waltham, St Mary’s in Hastingleigh and St James The Great in Elmsted.            

The school, has Voluntary Controlled status.  We consider it reasonable to assume that parents who send their children here are sympathetic to the Christian character of the school.  We regularly attend our churches for worship for special festivals such as Harvest, Christmas, and Easter and Ascension. Rev Lorraine Lawrence is a regular visitor to our school leading our acts of worship every other week. The Governors are responsible for the running of the school and regularly meet to discuss the development of the school.

Although Bodsham School is Voluntary Controlled its governance is through the Federation.

Our roots are firmly planted in the Church of England. Messy Church is held in school on the second Sunday of each month at 10am.

CHRISTIAN VALUES

Our Christian Values are those of Love, Creativity and Strength.

We encourage our children to believe that they can help to make the world a better place, as shown in Luke 5: 17-27:

We hear how some men carried their paralysed friend to be healed by Jesus. Because of the crowd they could find no way into the house where he was. So they carried him up to the roof, made an opening in the tiles, and let him down on his bed in to the middle of the group in front of Jesus. Jesus, seeing how much faith they had, healed the man and sent him home. In this story we can see our school values brought to life through action. The men showed love for their friend by taking him to Jesus, they showed creativity in finding a way to get through the crowd and strength in working together to place him in front of Jesus. We help our children to become strong and confident learners, who believe in themselves and develop the skills they need to make a positive difference in the world.

How then do we live?

Our Christian Values of Love, Creativity and Strength inform our curriculum which in turn aims to develop children’s independence, self-expression, resilience, communication skills, creativity, self-belief, enquiry skills and understanding of diversity.

LOVE, CREATIVITY AND STRENGTH

Each value also emphasises the qualities of each part of the Trinity.

Each of the key values have been subdivided into different aspects such as love into friendship, compassion, kindness and respect: creativity into curiosity and wisdom and strength into resilience, courage and self-discipline.  Each theme is clearly linked to a Bible story and a “big question” such as, “Are people who are happy more thankful than those who are not?”

Here we are enjoying, celebrating and demonstrating our values: embedded during work and play.

We firmly believe that academic success is just one part of our school and we aim to develop our pupils in all areas.  We place a high priority on children behaving in a respectful way to adults and their peers and we consider that every child is special.

In addition the themes are nurtured in different ways.  This includes:

• Our daily act of worship
• Class and school displays
• In reflection corners
• In our spiritual garden
• In our wide ranging acts of charitable giving
• In our positive interactions with and between all members of the school and local community
• In our focus on skills for learning and in particular resilience and perseverance.

The pupils demonstrate a huge compassion for those less fortunate than themselves and have raised considerable sums over the past few years for local, national and international charities.  Many of the events have been organised by the pupils themselves including a recent after school sale of home made goodies for the Lord Whisky Animal Sanctuary.  They have also been involved in Blue Peter fund raising, Red Nose Day and Children in Need to name but a few.

THE TRINITY

The children have a secure understanding of the Trinity.  They have been involved in creating a banner which illustrates this:  children within the school designed the illustrations that show God the Father and God the Son.  Each child brought in a white button which was sewn on to a white dove to show God the Holy Spirit.

CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS

We celebrate Christian Festivals each year including:

HARVEST

Our Harvest Festival service is held yearly at Elmsted Church and parents are welcome to attend. We invite the children to bring gifts that will be presented and blessed during the service.  For many years the gifts have been distributed by Porchlight.

ADVENT

CHRISTMAS

The children lead this act of worship in church. Nearly all families join their children for this service.

LENT

We often mark Lent with some act of self-sacrifice. Activities have included Lent Boxes, collecting coins for WaterAid for example.

EASTER

Easter is always celebrated at Bodsham School culminating with an end of term service at church led by the children.

ASCENSION

We start the day with a service to celebrate Jesus’ ascension into Heaven, as described in Luke Chapter 24 v 51. Following this the whole school carries out activities in the community.

Ascension Day 2021

Thursday 13th  May was Ascension Day and to mark that important date in the church calendar we were able to have our first whole school assembly since last March. Fittingly we all gathered outside under the Bodsham tree in our bubbles, at a safe distance. We were joined by our very own Rev Lorraine who had arranged for it to stop raining minutes before the worship began. It was a truly joyful experience seeing all the children together again.