Education & Training |
Supporting Schools & Parishes |
Parishes and Schools Working together
55 Practical Ideas
How To Use This Page
You could just read it and let it set you thinking!
It would be best to share it with a group of people, especially your PCC and ministerial chapter.
Why not start by asking people to tick just the five most obvious things that they know your church does already (there will probably be more than five!)? See if people agree on the five!
Then try to identify five more things that they think your church community could helpfully do and sustain. Try to choose the five that are most appropriate or valuable in your situation. It might be best to do this in pairs or small groups. When you come together again, list all the suggestions and then prioritise them. Agree to work on the top five. Spend some time then working out what each might mean in practice and agree on who will do what to implement them. Or you might think of better things not in the 55!
Make sure that you agree together when you will review progress and, perhaps, consider five more things to do!
Why not encourage all the parishes in your Deanery to do the exercise, and then set aside time at your Deanery Synod to share what everyone is doing and planning to do - especially where some schools serve more than one parish?
You can get copies of the 55 ways leaflet form the Diocesan Office.
Canon Tim Elbourne
Diocesan Director of Education and Training.
Prayer
- Include the School community regularly in public intercession.
- Establish a Prayer / Support Group for the School.
- At least one parish holds a monthly prayer event/group in school for governors, parents, teachers, clergy and teachers to join together.
- Include school and people involved in Parish Prayer Cycle and include relevant school news and needs in Diocesan Prayer Calendar
Worship
- Plan joint worship occasions between church and school in both places.
- Establish a School Eucharist.
- Include the school in special services for mid-week Festivals, Patronal Festival;
- Hold regular 'open' collective worship occasions in school, to which adults are invited.
- Establish a joint parish/ school choir, music group.
- Invite children who are learning instruments to play them in church.
- Encourage parish musicians to support music in school and school worship.
- Establish a core of hymns, song and liturgy that will be used in worship in both church and school.
- Encourage the school to use quality and up-to-date Collective Worship resources (readily available online or in print).
- Establish Education Sunday as a major opportunity for church and school to come together, using material circulated to parishes each year.
- Organise training jointly for worship leaders in church and school.
Activities
- Enable School to become a 'Friend of the Cathedral'.
- Enrol school as member of the National Society (and website subscriber) for a year (and encourage it to continue!)
- Offer an After-School Club in school run by the church.
- Establish a holiday club/ playscheme.
- Find ways to integrate Sunday School/ All Age Worship and School programmes.
- Share your parish's world church links with the school or vice versa.
- Run a joint Church/ School Christian Aid Week effort - give it an educational as well as fund-raising dimension.
- Organise jointly a Christmas Toy or Shoe-Box Appeal.
- Help create spaces for teaching staff to reflect and take stock and the congregations to reflect theologically on the tasks of education.
- Plan an annual Parish/School Day on which parish members visit and plan activities in school.
- Find ways of listening to children's perspectives of church/ Christian faith.
- In a Voluntary Controlled Church of England School, start a conversation about becoming Voluntary Aided.
- Encourage good flow of news through school page in parish magazine, church contribution to school newsletter etc.
The Church Building
- Enable children and staff to meet the living church community as well as see the churchyard and church building!
- Ensure classes which visit are personally and warmly welcomed.
- Encourage some church members to become 'church hosts', visiting and meeting children in school prior to church visit, so that there are friendly known faces.
- Ensure there are friendly church members in church at times when children visit, perhaps simply doing routine tasks.
- Take the initiative in hosting a visit from a school.
- Ask church members to "share their Christian story" when children visit.
- Devise - perhaps with school specialists - suitable written materials/ worksheets for when school classes visit - emphasising the Christian journey as well as church features.
- Make or find appropriate opportunities in the church event diary to which to specially invite children and their families e.g. Christingle.
- Find ways for lay Christians as well as clergy to share faith experience in appropriate ways with children in school - perhaps in RE or Collective Worship.
- Have regular displays of school children's work in church.
- Work with children to make an altar frontal, banners, vestments etc for the church.
- Church and school together organise a church based activity day for all the school community. Make it an ecumenical venture and include the whole village or neighbourhood.
Ministry
- See ministry to the school as a whole parish responsibility, not just the job of the clergy.
- Include the school in the parish Mission Statement and mission planning.
- Encourage people to become school governors - especially Foundation Governors - and make sure they know you value this lay ministry.
- Ensure there is feedback from Governors and a regular 'school' item on the PCC agenda.
- Co-opt the Headteacher to the PCC (but don't expect him/her to come each time!).
- Engender a "culture of affirmation" of the work of the teachers in your local school.
- Recognise and support church members who are involved in school life (as paid staff or volunteers) - not just in the local school.
- Include learning about Church Schools in the parish teaching programme.
- Organise pastoral training and support for adults involved in school.
- Nurture vocations to the teaching profession and affirm and support church members who are teachers.
- Organise or co-ordinate support for parents and "parenting".
- Liaise with school over dates and planning of 'big events' (fêtes, fund-raising etc.) - perhaps including some joint events.
- Are there other adults who could offer spare time to the school (from painting to hearing children read)?
- Encourage a Parent Teacher Association to become 'Friends of the School' so that it becomes open to the wider community (inc. the church).
- Make sure your school knows about the many diocesan resources available to it.
Diocesan Resources To Help You
People:
Canon Tim Elbourne Director of Education & Training Dr Shirley Hall Schools RE Adviser and members of the Education & Training TeamResources:
Resources Centre, Bishop Woodford House, Ely Cathedral: Mrs Jan Munt, Cathedral Education Officer, Cathedral Centre, ElyWebsites:
www.ely.anglican.org/education www.churchschools.co.uk www.natsoc.org.uk
Bishop Anthony writes:
Most of the ideas on this page can be used by parishes which seek to serve their local school, whatever its category. Some are more applicable to Church Schools with which parishes have a distinctive relationship and bear a special responsibility. Some of the ideas are more suited to the primary phase than secondary.
The ideas have been successfully adopted in parishes in this diocese and beyond; they are 'road tested'; though of course not all are practicable in every situation. They are deliberately brief and suggestive: each must be adapted for local circumstance.
When Lord Dearing visited this Diocese as part of his Church School Review work, he was told of two schools in which a colleague had taught. In the first, the parish's work with the school was almost entirely focussed on the vicar - school work was simply one of his duties. In the second, the parish community as a whole saw the school as a shared responsibility and church and school felt far more a single community. There, the relationship between school and parish really thrived.
Much of what is suggested here is to do with developing and building thriving relationships through which the Good News can be encountered and celebrated. Schools offer churches unparalleled opportunities for contact not just with children and teachers, but with families and other adults. Where these opportunities are fully taken, the mission of the church always develops in lively and positive ways.
I commend this leaflet to you as you develop your ministry to schools.
A significant part ofmy ministry is given to supporting the schools in this diocese. Schools are not just communities of learning, they are communitiies of faith and hope. I warmly commend this imprortant leaflet to you as together we develop our ministry to the schools of this diocese.
+Anthony Ely
Resolution Of Diocesan Synod
10th March 2001
This Synod believes that the Church Schools stand at the centre of the Church's mission in this Diocese and
- Supports efforts to increase Church School provision where appropriate opportunity arises and endorses the current Schools Work Development Plan.
- Urges PCCs and deaneries to further strengthen links with local Church Schools and become as fully involved as possible in the life of all local schools.
- Encourages church members to support local schools by serving as Governors.
- Commends the Secondary School Initiative, led by the Youth Council, and urges churches to work ecumenically to offer support and resources for collective worship in all schools.
- Resolves to invite to the Synod a national spokesperson after the publication of the Dearing Church Schools Review.