Church of England Status
The school was originally built in 1864 and opened as a C of E school for girls and infants. The current school building was erected in 1909 by the local Verney family. Over the years it became a local authority controlled community school. It has always benefited from close links with our parish church and in 2016 Governors decided to consult on making the move back towards our roots as an Oxford Diocese Voluntary Aided School. Feedback to the consultation was 100% positive, and the school opened as ‘East Claydon C of E School’ in September 2016.
Our Church status has precipitated many changes for the school, including:
Most of our Governors are now Foundation Governors, with a specific remit to ensure that our strategic priorities and day-to-day practice reflect our Christian vision and values.
We welcome the local vicars to the school to leads worship at the school on a Monday morning and they are able to offer chaplaincy to our children, staff and parents.
We spend time at our parish church, celebrating key points in the Christian calendar as well as using it as an opportunity to enrich our learning, from the History of the grave stones to throwing home-made parachutes off the church tower!
We welcome the team vicars and wider PCC in to school to help us really understand important aspects of Christianity and how they help us to live our lives.
Our daily collective worship focuses on our three key values of Love, Respect and Commitment. These are extended to include a wider set of values, with a combination of stories, quiet reflection time and music to help us really live our values in everything we do.
Because we are a Church of England school, we welcome children from all faiths and those with none. Our approach to worship (assembly time) is to ensure that it is inclusive, inspiring and invitational. The admissions policy for the school does not have a criteria that places church-going families above others as we want to ensure equality of access for everyone.
The British Values of tolerance and respect and individual liberty are at the heart of our RE and PSHE lessons, so that our children gain a much broader understanding of the world beyond East Claydon and can engage in serious debate about how to make it a better place for all.
SIAMS
We received our first SIAMS inspection as a church school in July 2019. It was a very valuable experience and we are now officially a ‘Good’ church school. The inspector also reviewed our collective worship practice and the quality of religious education. We are very proud to share that all areas of inspection are good and we have some innovative practice on which to build a future case for excellence. The full SIAMS report is available below.
