Our Church School and Community

2022 onwards

Our School Vision:

Following in the footsteps of our founder John Cross,  we are committed to providing a loving, Christian family school based on mutual love, respect and co-cooperation. A safe and stimulating learning environment will enable our pupils to believe and achieve now and in the future.

Our Motto:

Believe and Achieve.

Our Christian Narrative:

'Life in all its fullness' John 10:10

‘Life in all its fullness’ fully permeates every aspect of life at John Cross. John Cross was the benefactor of our school, whose generosity and compassion for children was rooted in his strong Christian faith which led to him donating the funds to build the first school  in order to ‘educate the children of Bilsborrow in the principles of the Christian religion.’ ( John Cross’s will 1718). By walking in the footsteps of John Cross, we follow his Biblical values which shape the social, moral, cultural and spiritual aspects  of school life. For 300 years since the school was founded, staff have nurtured a symbiotic relationship with the community, ensuring God’s love is evident through thoughts and actions, embedding Christian values which have provided the basis for individuals to shape their personal beliefs and respect for others. Today, we continue to follow the loving example of Jesus Christ in order to enable all our pupils to flourish socially, academically and spiritually.

Our caring and loving school environment is inclusive of children of all faiths and backgrounds and is where each child is loved, celebrated, and welcomed. We hold high aspirations for our pupils, whom we seek to become well-rounded, confident, honest, resilient, compassionate, ambitious, responsible and thoughtful people, who consistently demonstrate sound moral character, fulfil their God-given potential, and have a strong sense of community and their place within it. All of this ensures that  each child has solid foundations for their futures.

  We aim to do this through the broad curriculum and extra-curricular offer (including our Diocese’ Questful RE curriculum, SMSC, PSHE, RSE, Citizenship, Sports, Music, educational visits, visitors… etc), plus through invitational and pupil-inspired worship and prayer (or reflection), and through  the living out of our Christian vision and our values (perseverance, forgiveness, friendship, hope, trust, and compassion), which underpin every aspect of our school life. Such values are well-evidenced by our charitable and social-conscience focuses alongside our pupils’ determination to achieve goals and exhibit high standards of behaviour both in and out of school. This is often remarked upon by people who encounter the children.  School policies, implementation procedures, and monitoring by SLT staff (and governors), sensitively promote such things as Equality, Safeguarding, Pupil and Staff Wellbeing, and where necessary, early interventions, individualised EHC plans, TA support, and counselling are implemented to support this.  The RE lead and linked CPD of staff, ensure the RE provision, profile, resources, and progress, in all key stages, are apt to our church school status, vision and values.    

Our strong community links enable good working partnerships with parents, the local church and wider community, where working together enriches the opportunities and experiences that our children receive. For instance, partnership with Myerscough College has mutually enhanced the local environment through litter-picking and tree-planting, and built community spirit through the annual Carol service at the College, while sports partnership with Garstang Community Academy develops skills, coordination, fitness, well-being, confidence, teamwork, and fair-mindedness. Partnership with church is developed through school presentations at key times in the year, the vicar’s weekly school assemblies and  the annual confirmation offer. Partnership with Capernwray Bible College has also brought mutual inspiration through worship and questing interaction with international students… and so on.  Within the school community, children learn to collaboratively integrate, respect, and believe in the intrinsic and developing value of each other, to value themselves and the contributions they can make in immediate, wider, and global relationship, and learn how God can inspirationally help them to fulfil their potential.

In order to enable our younger members to engage in the theological rooting of our vision, we have chosen to further explain this  by including the story of The Feeding of the Five Thousand, which was proposed by Henry in Year 4. Firstly, the story demonstrates the strength of a community of people of different ages working together to support each other spiritually, physically and emotionally. As in this this story, Jesus sets the example for us to follow by the compassionate way he ensured that others needs were met before his own by accepting a child’s offer of help and as a consequence the  community of gathered people were able to receive both physical and spiritual nourishment. As Jesus did, we too believe in empowering our children to be the game changers, to stand out from the crowd, to take the first courageous steps, as the child in the story did, in order to show generosity and compassion by doing or giving what they can so that God can fulfil his plans for our school, community, nation or world and others as well as ourselves can Believe and Achieve and live ‘life in all its fullness.’

2018-2021

Our Community Links