At St Bega’s, personal development is crucial for nurturing well-rounded, responsible and unique individuals. It goes beyond academic achievements, focusing on building essential life skills such as emotional intelligence, resilience, and self-awareness. By integrating personal development into the curriculum, we encourage our children to understand the moral, social and cultural aspects of society and to foster a sense of responsibility and empathy. This prepares our children not only for academic success but also for the challenges of life and being a member of our ever-changing society. We aim to enable them to become confident, capable, and compassionate.
Our school's unique location on the historic headland offers a rich environment that significantly supports our children's personal development. Surrounded by the echoes of history and the beauty of nature, children are constantly reminded of their roots and the legacy they are part of. This setting fosters a deep sense of identity and belonging, encouraging children to explore their heritage and develop a strong connection to their community. By engaging with the local history and environment, students gain a greater appreciation for their surroundings, which in turn strengthens their self-awareness and confidence. This not only enhances their academic learning but also nurtures their growth into well-rounded, grounded individuals.
We incorporate the coast into many strands of the curriculum: Literacy, Art, Science, Geography, History, Music and Design Technology. Our children learn to appreciate the waves, sand, and interact with natural objects to help them learn. We create collage, seascapes and landscapes of the local area and explore conservation, recycling, sustainability, and the value our oceans have to our planet. To promote responsibility, we take part in regular beach cleans to help keep our coastlines clean and safe places to learn and enjoy. The headland is the perfect location to study coastal habitats, biomes and local weather patterns. We embrace our unique location and explore our local history using local landmarks such as the Heugh Gun Battery and the Norman church St Hilda’s.
PSHE/RSE Curriculum
Our PSHE/RSE curriculum incorporates relationships, staying safe, health and wellbeing, careers and living in the wider world. It is linked to our contextual safeguarding priorities (coastal, rail and road safety) and explores staying safe online, including AI and cyber security. We include explicit teaching of safeguarding in our curriculum map and teach children about sexual harassment, child on child abuse, online safety, protected characteristics, anti-bullying and financial education. We bring in experts to support the children’s learning: NSPCC, Dog’s Trust, school nurse, local police and the fire service.
Catholic Life
‘Love one another as I have loved you.’
At St Bega’s, Christ is at the heart of what we do. We are part of the Bishop Hogarth Catholic Education Trust and the mission of St Bega’s reflects the philosophy of BHCET and stems from a desire to provide a caring and loving environment in which every child is able to grow in faith, knowledge and understanding of the world around them.
Our Mini Vinnies turn concern into action by organising and running several events across the liturgical calendar. During Autumn Term, they organise our Harvest Festival, donations to the food bank and raise money for local charities. During Lent they choose an initiative that will benefit the most vulnerable in our community and support CAFOD. This aligns with Catholic Social Teaching where we follow the footsteps of Christ. This is a focus of our Key Stage Celebrations of the Word where we articulate the connection between Jesus' teaching and doing good deeds how this should shape our lives a today.
Our Trust Virtues
Children at St Bega’s are inspired by Christ and demonstrate this using our Trust Virtues of confidence, compassion, resilience, responsibility, honesty, self-belief, justice and respect.
British Values
At St Bega’s, we pride ourselves in reinforcing British Values with our children, to enable them to grow into good citizens. We aim to nurture our children on their journey through life so they can grow into safe, caring, democratic, responsible and tolerant adults who make a positive difference to British Society and to the world. We encourage all children to be tolerant and respectful to those of different faiths and beliefs. This is done by providing the children with an understanding of the main festivals and key dates of significance to British culture e.g. Remembrance Day, the King's Birthday and major political events such as elections. We celebrate key British events such as royal weddings and birthdays.
We recognise the need to create and enforce a clear and rigorous expectation to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs, we do this through our curriculum and the celebration of our Trust Virtues.
Sporting events and competitions
As a member of Hartlepool Schools Sport’s Partnership children are given the opportunity to participate in activities such as Sports Leadership, Dodgeball, Tag Rugby, Football, Athletics, Netball and Cricket across the year. Our school Sports Leaders hold sports activities during lunchtime for children throughout the school. By participating in competitions and festivals, our pupils receive the opportunity to develop their confidence and resilience whilst working as a team. We also participate in Trust competitions and provide physical activity from external provider: EYFS balance bikes, Judo, Bikeability for Y5/6, Swimming for KS2, and football clubs with HUFC.
School clubs
We offer extra-curricular clubs to merge social, physical, emotional and academic skills. Most recently we have provided LEGO club, Recorder Club, Clay Club, Times Table Rockstar Club, Skipping Club, Football, Cooking club, Choir, Craft Club and regularly ask the children what they would like to see at St Bega’s.
Pupil Voice, Responsibilities and Wellbeing
We promote our Trust Virtues, Catholic Social Teaching and Fundamental British Values by providing roles and responsibilities for our pupils. We have a Head Boy, Head Girl, Deputy Head Boy and Deputy Head Girl in Y6. They have to apply for the position via an application form and then complete an interview process to mirror the working world. They plan and run our Friday celebration assembly and welcome visitors into our school. They are the face of St Bega’s! We have House Captains who support with our celebration assembly and monitor house points. We also have librarians and sport’s leaders.
We have a Pupil Parliament representative in our school. They meet regularly with their trust counterparts and have recently been on a visit to Denmark as part of the Turing Scheme.
Regular pupil voice surveys are carried out to enable staff to listen to views, wishes and experiences of our pupils. Pupils feel listened to and can share their thoughts and hopes on the school, learning and wider experiences.
As part of our commitment to pupil wellbeing, we have a child friendly safeguarding policy that the children access in their classroom. It is revisited regularly so it represents the needs of the children in our care. We provide opportunities for children to work with wellbeing specialists such as NSPCC, local police, school nurse and other agencies who come into school to enhance our understanding of how to keep mentally and physically healthy.
School Council
St Bega’s have an established School Council, who meet regularly to discuss issues such as attendance, school events, wellbeing, sustainability and safeguarding. These formal meetings have an agenda and are recorded and fed back to each class. Our Student Council have organised events such as St Bega’s Got Talent, a themed lunch for Valentine’s Day and various fundraising initiatives.
Educational visits and trips
As part of our curriculum, we make local visits to enhance our learning. We use our unique location to our advantage and visit the beach, the local library, Tweddle Farm, Heugh Gun Battery and the Historic Quay. We also travel further afield to places such as Beamish, the Life Centre, Tees Barrage, the Discovery Museum and Saltholme.
Wider opportunities & Hidden Curriculum
Across the year, we participate in many local and national opportunities: Science Week, NSPCC Number Day, Children’s Mental Health Week, Black History Month, Autism Awareness Day, Road Safety Week, Anti-bullying Week, National Storytelling Week, Holocaust Memorial Day, World Book Day, Remembrance Day and Children in Need. We have also taken part in Mini-Medics sessions and have visits from the Dog’s Trust. The children take part in our trust Debate Mate competition and link up with other schools for Spelling bees and languages events.
We actively encourage and model oracy and conversation skills. We expect children to respond to greetings and questions about their weekend and day so far and actively encourage them to reciprocate. in the same way. We model and reward good manners to staff members, visitors, kitchen staff and cleaners. We link this to our trust virtues and how Jesus would treat the people he met.
Power of Women
We have joined the Power of Women campaign (PoW). PoW is a program that gives our children the opportunity to reach their full potential, regardless of their gender. Their focus is elevating aspirations, by inspiring young people and broaden their horizons through connections with successful women from diverse backgrounds, showcasing the limitless possibilities that await them. PoW challenges gender stereotypes that limit young people’s ambitions. By fostering inclusivity and encouraging collaboration between boys and girls, we create a more equitable and supportive learning environment. Being part of PoW builds confidence and resilience by equipping young people with essential life skills, such as communication, teamwork, and leadership, empowering them to overcome challenges and achieve their goals.
To become a PoW ambassador, the children must partake in a recruitment process. If they are successful, they go to inspiring events, explore valuable career opportunities, and link in with local businesses to access local role models in the world of work.
Celebration events
At St Bega’s we celebrate our successes. We have a weekly celebration assembly, led by our Head Boy and Head Girl. We award Trust Virtue Certificates, Star of the Week, Times Table Rockstar awards, PROUD certificates, House Points and have a weekly Headteacher Award. Each week, a different class awards our Catholic Social Teaching trophy to someone who has put their faith into action. We also have termly awards for the class with the highest attendance and spot prizes for children who have 98% attendance or higher.