Oscar Romero Award

Huge congratulations to all our children, staff and governors for achieving the Oscar Romero Award!

The Oscar Romero Award is a framework that supports Catholic schools in recognising and celebrating what they do to support and promote the Catholic Social Teaching Principles, and they embed these into both their ethos and culture. The award has three levels, the Participator level, the Developer level and the Innovator level.

St John the Baptist Primary School receive the Oscar Romero Award - Participator Level on 13th June 2024!

Some of the feedback we received was:

• The Governing Body is committed to ensuring that dignity and respect features in all school policies

• Catholic Social Teaching (CST) features strongly on the school website and is integral to the school’s mission and forms the focus for enrichment activities.

• There is both a designated CST leader and a pupil team that support CST activities in the school.

• CST is incorporated into the curriculum and in every Celebration of the Word, there is a direct focus and link to CST.

• Evidence submitted in this strand also includes how children were encouraged to bring material for recycling into school to teach them about their responsibility to care for God’s world. This material was turned into art work and was shared with families.

• In the curriculum strand evidence has been supplied that supports that children learn about social justice in a variety of subjects. Examples include, Year 6 Literacy where children wrote a balanced argument on whether single use plastics should be banned, Year 4 History where children learnt about migration by looking at Anglo Saxon settlements plus in Year 2 children looked at a text by Greta Thunberg that focussed on deforestation and in Year 3 children wrote comic strips to promote recycling.

• Of particular note is the work of the Laudato Si group where they are developing a space where vegetables can be grown and used in School – the eventual plan being that families in need will be able to use this space to grow their own food.

• The school uses CAFOD materials in assemblies to promote justice and fairness. In the RE curriculum CST is incorporated to consolidate Pope Francis’ encyclicals – Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti thus ensuring that pupils understand their rights and responsibilities both to themselves and the Common Good.

• In the practical strand a variety of evidence has been supplied to demonstrate how the school supports charities such as the local food bank, soup kitchen and our local church refugee centre. In solidarity, with the school community, donations of goods are requested.

• All children enjoy a leadership role of some kind and evidence has been supplied to support this. Through these roles, children develop confidence and leadership skills and the ability to challenge injustice.

• In your self-assessment statement, you acknowledge how brilliantly your children have been in unpicking injustice within the world, particularly in the history curriculum where they have become passionate about the suffering that has been inflicted on people by world leaders. Your work developing the Laudato Si centre is particularly exciting and you are to be congratulated on this great endeavour that is clearly going to be such a benefit to your community in the future.