This year pupils and staff of St Andrew’s RC Primary in Falkirk have been promoting gospel values and virtues in a more active way.

Each month, a value or virtue is reflected upon and, through assemblies and RME teaching, our young people develop their awareness and understanding of the named value on a religious, global and school level. For example, the children learned about ‘Dignity and Compassion’ through bible stories, St Maximilian Kolbe, the work of Mother Teresa and the Beatitudes. This knowledge and understanding helped the children to be more proactive in their fundraising efforts especially with SCIAF.

John Sharp, from SCIAF, visited the school and spoke to all of the children about how our donation of £1150, from last session, would have been used to help the earthquake victims in Haiti and progress being made. John was also delighted to receive a cheque for £2000 after our Lenten fundraising campaign.

At the end of every month, winners from each class are chosen, usually by their peers, and a ‘values lunch’, in their honour, is shared with some members of staff, parents and our school chaplain, Fr Simon Hughes.

Gospel values require nurturing and practice so that our young people come to live by them and the fostering of values and virtues also enables natural cross curricular links to be made with the social, emotional and mental health aspects of Health and Wellbeing and also to develop global citizenship.

For more details, contact Maureen Harkins at St Andrew's.