What is collective worship?

Collective worship is a time for staff and students to explore their own beliefs, consider spiritual and moral issues, and engage in conversations about God, both as individuals and together. It is also a time where we learn about different religious festivals and learn about our school Christian values.

Daily Collective Worship is a vital part of our school community and is planned to be inclusive, invitational, inspirational and keenly relevant to the lives of all children and staff.  The content and delivery are carefully planned so that it;

• is inspiring and transformational
• includes a range of creative opportunities such as music, silence, symbol and drama
• develops the Christian vision, values and ethos of the school

We collaborated with our partner Church (Christ Church Downend) and our Foundation Governors to ensure we followed a distinctly Anglican litergy routine. Following governor monitoring feedback, we included our school Christian vision as part of our daily collective worship and adjusted the way we light the candles - making this symbolism a more significant part of our collective worship. In agreement with our Governors, we agreed that we would use the ‘Roots and Fruits’ resources and adopted the ‘Windows, Mirrors and Doors’ format as it gave us a clear structure for teaching the children about our school Christian Values.

Click on the link below for a explaination of the 'Windows, Mirrors and Doors' format.

Members of the Governors, our partner church and the school community, recently dedicated an INSET day to exploring what spirituality is which led to the development of our CCI definition of spirituality.  As a result of the impact of this training, we changed our Friday collective worship from ‘celebration through singing’ to being a day where we can explore spirituality.

How is collective worship structured?

As a school, we devised the following structures and routines for our collective worship times in collabroation with our partner church and school Governors. This has led to a consistent approach being used by all stakeholders in how collective worship is delivered on a termly, weekly and daily basis.

Termly structure of our collective worship

• Introduce the Christian Value
• Link this to the termly Bible Story
• Follow the set pattern in Roots & Fruits for each Value
• Find real life examples of inspirational people who live out the values
• Stories from other faiths and cultures that help to demonstrate the value.
• Include visitors from CCD (our partner church) who tell another Bible story that also models the value, using Jack in the Box.
• Learn about celebrations and traditions from other faiths and teach British Values.
• Include essential safety tools for children such as online safety and trusted adults linked to the value of the term

Weekly structure of collective worship

• Bible Story linked to Value
• bringing the Value to life
• Worship through Celebration
• Roots & Fruits
• Developing Spiritual awareness

Click on the link below to see a collective worship termly timetable 

Daily structure of collective worship

• Our chosen Liturgy - 'Peace be with you and also with you'
• Our welcome words - 'We have gathered in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to worship together and think of our Value of….' with candle bearers lighting 3 candles whilst we say these words
• Our school Christian Vision with actions – 'We are a caring community, courageously learning, inspired to live life to the full.'
• Following a 'windows, mirrors and doors' approach
• Reflection and prayer provide the children with the opportunity for sending out with thoughts about changing how they live their lives to the full.

How is collective worship monitored?

Collective worship is monitored by our team of Foundation Governors. They are responsible for making sure that our collective worship times deliver the aims and objectives listed above. They regularly monitor the full range of collective worship experiences and observe how these are presented by a variety of staff and other stake holders.

In order to manage this consistently, they use a monitoring form that was developed by one of our Foundation Governors.

Click on the link below to see an example of the monitoring form.