Faith & Beliefs Day

Friday 24th September saw our first Faith and Beliefs Day at St Martins. As a school, and a community, it is vital that we teach our children to be inclusive and respectful of individual differences so that as they grow into young adults and have families of their own, they model tolerance and understanding of others.

The day was filled with visitors making their way to different classrooms talking about their beliefs. Marc Kerslake came from the East Clyst Mission in his ‘uniform’ and spent time with the new children in Reception, who were able to tell him all about the St Martin’s cross, and what some of our values are. 

In KS2, classes had visitors from the Jewish faith, the Humanist group, two Buddhists and two members of the Baha’i faith. Children were able to hold artefacts and share stories from the different faiths and belief systems.

The afternoon saw all year 5 and 6 in the hall taking part in a “Question Time” panel discussion with all our visitors. You can view this by clicking on the following link.

The aim for the day was to see our ‘sameness’ in everyone, and this was the impact.

All the visitors said how much they had enjoyed visiting the school, how they found the children to be curious and engaging, and how thoughtful the questions were.

I hope we can make this a bit of a St Martin’s tradition in the future.