School of Sanctuary

We had some great news at the end of last half term – our school has been re-accredited as a School of Sanctuary!  This is down to the hard work and dedication from the children, our staff and the wider school community, so thank you for everything that you do towards making our school a welcoming place for all.

Some of our child Sanctuary Ambassadors spoke with confidence to a panel of experts about how our school is a welcoming and safe place for new arrivals, sharing aspects of their learning and the wider school efforts.

Feedback from the Schools of Sanctuary Coordinator included:

We feel confident that the school has fully met the minimum criteria and will continue to develop their sanctuary work over the coming years. We were particularly impressed by the school’s literacy schemes of work, which helps students to use a range of different sanctuary-related books to slowly advance and deepen their understanding of complex issues. We also very much enjoyed hearing about how the wider community had engaged in the schools’ sanctuary efforts, such as parents volunteering to support new families and parents’ testimonies about the importance of the schools’ sanctuary efforts on their children’s understanding of sanctuary issues.

This was very much demonstrated in our conversation with students who responded to (often challenging!) questions with compassion and thoughtfulness, which evidenced how they had already critically engaged with a range of sanctuary related issues before. As one student said ‘sanctuary is more than a roof over someone’s head and food to eat’. Students spoke passionately about the importance of being welcome and how everyone was responsible for welcoming and supporting new arrivals, whilst recognising how new arrivals enrich the school and wider community. One comment that particularly stood out was ‘ we value that we are all different, and recognise that we are all special and bring something different [to school]’ - we literally couldn’t have said it better ourselves. We were hugely impressed by a group of very articulate and engaged students.

We are very much looking forward to continuing to ensure that our school is a happy, safe and welcoming place for those seeking sanctuary.