What is spirituality? 

‘It’s really all about love’

Spiritual development relates to fundamental questions about the meaning and purpose of life.

We define spirituality as “the deepest values and meanings by which people seek to live.”  Our school vision embodies this, placing spirituality at the root of everything we do and is reflected in our vision: Like Matthew, we learn to love, love to learn understanding we are all different but all equal. It is the way our fundamental values, lifestyles and spiritual practices reflect our understanding of God, ourselves, others and the world around us.

• Religion and worship
• Relationships to other and/or to God
• Evocative or favourite places and experiences
• Creativity and responses to Art and music
• Mystery and what we can’t really understand
• Prayer, silence and meditation
• The opposite of what we can touch and feel (the material world)
• Experiences which take us beyond ourselves
• What is everlasting, or transcendent or ultimate

Ofsted, in 2019, highlighted the importance of spirituality in schools and stated that;

“Pupils’ spiritual development is shown by their: beliefs, religious or otherwise, which inform their perspective on life and their interest in and respect for different people’s feelings and values sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning about themselves, others and the world around them, including the intangible use of imagination and creativity in their learning willingness to reflect on their experiences.”

What does Spiritual Development look like at St Helen’s?

Promoting spiritual development is at the core of our curriculum design. Our approach at St Helen’s first starts with acknowledging that spirituality will be a different experience for all individuals and that children will be at different stages of their own journey. The everyday experiences that our children encounter support asking the ‘big questions’ and allow them to explore the awe and wonder of the world around us. Spiritual experiences will offer time and space to consider topics that are possibly unknown or challenging as concepts but central to the development of individual values and beliefs. The experiences will explicitly develop our children intellectually, emotionally and morally. As a school, we have chosen to use Liz Mills’ Windows, Mirrors, Doors concept as a common reflective structure for spirituality and is accessible for all of our pupils, from EYFS through to Year 6. This will enable our children to love their learning, learn to love and understand that we are all different but equal.

Windows allow us to look into the world, to the physical, to people, religion and faith. Windows allow us to look outward and develop skills and knowledge around a theme or subject area.

Mirrors allow us to look inward, to reflect on our accomplishments, our beliefs, our creativity and when moments create a ‘feeling’ for us. Mirrors help us develop our own moral skills, our own talents and feelings.

Doors allow us to consider our learning and act upon what we have seen or learned. Doors allow us to think more widely about how they can take what they have understood about themselves and the world into the community in order to lead or model change.

Our pupils encounter a wide variety of opportunities to develop their spirituality over their time with us. These include, but are not limited to:

• daily collective worship
• reflection tasks linked to worship
• responding in their reflection area questions
• contributing to their class prayer book
• an ambitious and broad topic based cross curriculum bespoke for our school
• through our PSHE curriculum
• outdoor learning days
• forest school
• collective art projects
• learning about significant people and how they have changed our world
• reflection garden
• sensory garden
• attending events such as performing at the O2 and the local theatre
• participating in sporting events such as the mini youth games
• class assemblies
• leading church services
• contributing to the class news book

We want to ensure that our pupils think about their own place in the world.

What are the indicators of developing spiritually?

The following are seen as the indicators of effective spiritual development in our school. Pupils who are developing spiritually are likely to be developing some or all of the following characteristics:

• a set of values, principles and beliefs, which may or may not be religious, which inform their perspective on life and their patterns of behaviour 
• an awareness and understanding of their own and others’ beliefs 
• an ability to understand the notion of community and to see themselves in relation to a variety of communities 
• a respect for themselves and for others 
• a sense of empathy with others, concern and compassion
• an increasing ability to reflect and learn from this reflection 
• an ability to show courage and persistence in defence of their aims, values, principles and beliefs 
• an appreciation of the intangible – for example, beauty, truth, love, goodness, order – as well as for mystery, paradox and ambiguity 
• a respect for insight as well as for knowledge and reason 
• an expressive and/or creative impulse 
• resilience in the face of challenges or when things don’t go the way we expect or want
• an ability to think in terms of the ‘whole’ – for example, concepts such as harmony, interdependence, scale, perspective 
• an understanding of feelings and emotions, and their likely impact, and an ability to talk about feelings

Spirituality across the curriculum

Our children encounter a range of opportunities, within and outside of collective worship, to develop their own spiritual journey. A variety of opportunities are included throughout the curriculum, whereby we encourage our pupils to reflect and consider their own actions in a number of different ways. 

Pupils’ spiritual development is shown by their:

• their love of learning, sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning about themselves, others and the world around them, including the intangible
• beliefs, religious or otherwise, which inform their perspective on life and their interest in and respect for different people’s feelings and values
• use of imagination and creativity in their learning
• willingness to reflect on their experiences

Our ambitious topic-based approach ensures that children are exposed to a wide variety of spiritual and deep questions, enabling them to think about their place in the world and to think beyond themselves about challenging concepts such as stewardship, justice, discrimination, exploitation and social action. 

Here are some opportunities across our curriculum:

Religious Education

• By experiencing wonder and joy through learning about and from stories, celebrations, rituals and different expressions of religion and worldviews.
• By asking and responding to questions of meaning and purpose.
• By considering questions about God and evaluating truth claims.
• By exploring spiritual practices such as worship and prayer, and considering the impact of these on believers as well as relevance to their own life.
• By developing our own beliefs

English

• By allowing for insight, self-expression and the chance to walk in someone else’s shoes and consider other viewpoints
• By writing creatively, embracing our own skills and imagination, understanding of words and language
• By exploring texts and stories that challenge our perspectives and express ‘big ideas’ about life and ethical issues

Maths

• By developing resilience and perseverance in the face of challenge
• By reasoning and solving problems, understanding other points of view or approaches
• By developing an appreciation of the intangible and abstract

Science

• By demonstrating openness to the fact that some answers cannot be provided by Science.
• By creating opportunities for pupils to ask questions about how living things rely on and contribute to their environment
• By experiencing awe and wonder of the natural world and the diverse individuals who contributed to the field of science.

Physical Education

• By delighting in movement, particularly when pupils are able to show spontaneity.
• By taking part in activities such as dance, games and gymnastics which help pupils to become more focused, connected and creative.
• By being aware of one’s own strengths and limitations.

Computing

• By wondering at the power of the digital age e.g. use of the internet and social media.
• By understanding the advantages and limitations of modern technology.
• By using the internet as a gateway to big life issues.

Music

• By allowing pupils to show their delight and curiosity in creating their own sounds.
• By considering how music makes one feel and can ‘move us’ deeply.
• By understanding the way artists communicate their feelings through their music

Art and Design Technology

• By enjoying and celebrating personal creativity and reviewing and evaluating created things.
• By exploring different artists’ interpretations of a key figure or event and asking what the artist was trying to convey.
• By allowing pupils to show what they know through their own expression of big ideas about life and the world around them

PSHE/RSHE

• By developing awareness of and responding to others’ needs and wants.
• By exploring meaning and purpose for individuals and society.
• By developing resilience and inner strength.
• By valuing self as unique in the image of God.
• By cherishing relationships.

Geography

• By using maps and asking pupils to imagine what it might be like to live in different parts of the world and comparing their lives with others.
• By making links with history when exploring the environment and speculating on why the landscape has developed in a certain way, and human impact upon this.
• By exploring the awe and wonder of the natural world

History

• By considering how things would be different if the course of events had been different
• By looking at local history and investigating the reasons why our community developed in a certain way
• By considering how we mark important events from history and the people who shaped them.

MFL

• By exploring the beauty of languages from around the world.
• By exploring the way language is constructed.
• By developing an understanding of the language of others.

We hope that this explanation gives a clear understanding of Spirituality and spiritual development at St Helen’s, allowing  our children to Love to learn, learn to love, understanding we are all different but all equal.