Our faith can move mountains

 Matthew 17:20 

Our Christian Values at Loscoe C of E Primary School and Nursery 

Our School Values

A Statement of Purpose and Vision

"Our faith can move mountains."

Matthew 17:20 — The Vision of Loscoe CE Primary School

"We may be small but together, we can make a big difference."

Our Vision and the Values that Flow from It

At Loscoe Church of England Primary School and Nursery, our school vision is rooted in a single, powerful verse of Scripture: Matthew 17:20 - 'Our faith can move mountains.' This is not merely an aspirational slogan. It is a theological conviction that shapes everything we do: the way we teach, the way we care for one another, the way we engage with our community, and the way we prepare our children for life in a complex and challenging world.

Our vision finds its daily expression in our whole-school ethos: we may be small, but together, we can make a big difference. This ethos is honest about our context – we are a small primary school in Derbyshire, serving a community that faces real challenges. But it is equally honest about what we believe: that smallness is never a barrier when it is met with faith, togetherness, and shared purpose. The mountain-moving power of Matthew 17:20 belongs to every child who walks through our doors.

Our values exist to make this vision concrete. They are the daily practices, dispositions, and habits of the heart through which our vision becomes real – not just in collective worship, but in classrooms, playgrounds, corridors, and communities across the week and across the year.

How Our Values Were Developed

Loscoe CE Primary School previously explored twelve values across a rolling two-year cycle.  However, as a school community, we recognised that twelve values, visited briefly each year, did not allow the sustained depth of exploration that genuine character formation requires. Our values should not be encountered quickly and moved on from – they should be lived with, returned to, and deepened over time. We therefore made the decision to distil our twelve values into six, each explored across a full half-term per year over a two-year cycle.

The six values were not chosen arbitrarily. Each one absorbs and holds two or more of the original twelve within it, ensuring that nothing of theological or character significance is lost, while the focus and depth of each half-term is significantly increased. The process of distillation was guided by three questions:

The Three Guiding Questions 1.  Does this value have deep and rich roots in Christian Scripture and tradition – sufficient to sustain six weeks of collective worship in each year of the cycle? 2.  Does this value speak directly to the lives of our children – to their personal development, their relationships, their community, and the world they are growing into? 3.  Does this value connect to and reinforce our school vision – faith that moves mountains – and our whole-school ethos of making a big difference together?

Applying these three questions to our original twelve values, a natural pattern emerged. Some values are essentially expressions of others; some are best understood together; some carry within them a family of related dispositions. The six values that emerged are not a reduction of the original twelve – they are a deepening of them

The Shape of the Programme

Each value is explored across one full half-term per year, over a two-year rolling cycle. Within each half-term, two collective worship sessions per week are dedicated to the value:

"We may be small — but together, our faith can move mountains."

Faith  |  Compassion  |  Forgiveness  |  Perseverance  |  Justice  |  Thankfulness

Loscoe Church of England Primary School and Nursery

Our Six Values – An Overview

The table below sets out each of the six values, the values from our original twelve that it encompasses, and an overview of the Year 1 and Year 2 content and focus.

1.  FAITH    |    Absorbs: Trust | Courage

YEAR 1 Focus: What is faith? Trusting in God and in ourselves. Introducing the concept of faith as active trust — not certainty, but the courage to begin. YEAR 2 Focus: Deepening faith: trusting God through uncertainty and doubt. What happens when faith is hard? When we take our eyes off Jesus and begin to sink? Link to Vision and Ethos:  Faith is the foundation of our school vision. Matthew 17:20 – 'Our faith can move mountains'–names faith as the starting point for everything we do. This value opens the two-year programme because everything else flows from it.

2.  COMPASSION    |    Absorbs: Generosity | Service | Care for others

YEAR 1 Focus: What is compassion? Noticing others and responding with kindness and action. Compassion as the outward face of faith - turning us towards each other and the world., YEAR 2 Focus: Deepening compassion: seeing the world through others' eyes; giving what we have and trusting it will be enough. Compassion as a community, not just an individual act. Link to Vision and Ethos:  Compassion is faith turned outward. If faith moves our mountains, compassion moves us towards the mountains others are facing. Our ethos - together, we can make a big difference – is an expression of collective compassion in action.

3.  FORGIVENESS    |    Absorbs: Friendship | Reconciliation | Restoration

YEAR 1 Focus: What is forgiveness? Why is it hard - and why does it matter? Forgiveness as choosing to release resentment, not for the other person's sake alone, but for our own freedom. YEAR 2 Focus: Deepening forgiveness: forgiving when it is truly costly; forgiveness as a force that can transform nations. 'You intended evil - God intended good.' (Genesis 50:20) Link to Vision and Ethos:  Forgiveness is what makes community possible. Mountains of resentment and broken relationships block our path together. Forgiveness moves them - restoring friendship, reconciling division, and making the school a place where every child can truly belong.

4.  PERSEVERANCE    |    Absorbs: Courage | Resilience | Determination

YEAR 1 Focus: What is perseverance? Trying again after failure; building brick by brick. Perseverance as courage sustained over time — not a single moment of bravery but a daily decision to keep going. YEAR 2 Focus: Deepening perseverance: persevering through injustice; running our own race. The great cloud of witnesses cheering us on; fixing our eyes on Jesus.   Link to Vision and Ethos:  Perseverance is the daily embodiment of our vision. If faith is believing the mountain can move, perseverance is the sustained effort of actually moving it - day after day, setback after setback, without giving up. Nehemiah's wall, finished in 52 days against all odds, is Loscoe's story too.

5.  JUSTICE    |    Absorbs: Truthfulness | Fairness | Speaking up for others

YEAR 1 Focus: What is justice? Fairness, truth, and the courage to stand up for others. The difference    YEAR 2 Focus: Deepening justice: systemic injustice; justice and mercy held together; the beloved  by community, expressed through non-violence Link to Vision and Ethos:  Justice is the most outward-facing of our values – the place where our small school in Derbyshire connects to the world. Our ethos – together, we can make a big difference – finds its most world-changing expression here. Amos cried out in the marketplace; we cry out from our school hall, our classrooms, and our community.

6.  THANKFULNESS    |    Absorbs: Respect | Wonder | Gratitude for creation and for one another

YEAR 1 Focus: What is thankfulness? Noticing what is good — even in difficulty. Thankfulness as a practice that changes both the person who gives it and the person who receives it. YEAR 2 Focus: Deepening thankfulness: gratitude as a sustained discipline; thankfulness for creation, for community, and for our own existence. The closing of the circle — and the beginning of the next. Link to Vision and Ethos:  Thankfulness is the final value – and the one that holds all the others together. It is the natural response of a heart that has been changed by faith, compassion, forgiveness, perseverance, and justice. Our programme ends here because thankfulness is both the conclusion and the foundation: gratitude for what we have received is what sends us back to faith and into the next cycle renewed.

The Programme as a Whole

Taken together, these six values form a coherent journey. They begin with Faith – the inward conviction that God is trustworthy and that we are capable of more than we think. They move outward through Compassion and forgiveness – the values of relationships and community. They are sustained by perseverance – the daily choice to keep going. They reach into the world through justice – the prophetic call to make things right. And they are all gathered up and completed in thankfulness – the response of a heart that has received abundantly and knows it.

This journey maps directly onto our school vision and ethos. Faith moves us to believe the mountain can move. Compassion and Forgiveness build the community that moves it together. Perseverance keeps us moving when the mountain pushes back. Justice defines which mountains most need to move. And Thankfulness reminds us, at the end of every cycle, that the moving of mountains is not our achievement – it is God's gift, entrusted to us, to be received with gratitude and passed on to the next generation.

"We may be small — but together, our faith can move mountains."

Faith  |  Compassion  |  Forgiveness  |  Perseverance  |  Justice  |  Thankfulness

 

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