Our Vision

Working together: our key partners (staff, governors, parents/carers and the local community) are committed to inspiring our future generations, so we achieve educational excellence and develop children’s individual talents and characters so everyone develops a thirst for knowledge and a love of learning, for life, and is proud to be part of our whole school community.

We are committed to inclusion, believing that every child has the right to succeed, we take responsibility to ensure that barriers to learning are overcome and that all children succeed in realising their potential to be the best they can be; irrespective of their backgrounds or starting points.

We want our whole school community to be welcoming, safe, happy, positive, supportive and inclusive, where every individual has opportunities, is treated fairly, is valued for being themselves, has a sense of belonging, participates fully in school life and understands wider issues.

Dream, Believe, Achieve, Nurture, Experience

Our 5 aims that underpin our school ethos are:

Dream: promote high aspirations by providing pupils with opportunities to learn about the career options open to them in the future.

Believe: encourage pupils to become confident, independent learners to develop the skills they need for future success.

Achieve: provide pupils with core skills and capabilities such as team work, problem solving and imagination in order that they strive to be the best they can be.

Nurture: foster each child's spiritual, emotional, moral, social and cultural development, promoting positive attitudes and a clear understanding of British Values.

Experience: offer a diverse and challenging curriculum that engages and stimulates pupils, taking care to meet the individual needs of pupils.

From the above we have our termly themes. These themes have additional goals we want the children at Southwood to understand and demonstrate in their everyday life inside and outside of school. The other 2 themes: nurture and experience, underpin everything that we do.

Our Core Values

Underpinning our vision and aims are our core values:

• to have healthy bodies and minds (health)
• to respect the school, everyone in it and the local community (respect)
• to be responsible for our actions and be honest, even when we make mistakes (honesty)
• to show care and understanding towards each other and think from others’ perspectives as well as our own (care)
• to communicate politely and effectively with others (communication)
• to engage with the school curriculum and be curious about what we don’t know or can’t do yet (curiosity)
• to think creatively when faced with a problem or challenge (creativity)