Welcome to the St Matthew's Christian Ethos Group homepage! 

At St Matthew’s, our ethos forms a vital part of everyday life. We believe that all our pupils should have the opportunity to develop a set of values they can use now and in the future.

To ensure Christian Values are at the forefront of each pupil’s mind, we formed an Ethos Group. Our Christian Values drive everything we do here at St Matthew’s and are embedded throughout our school to promote Christian distinctiveness and Spirituality.

What is an Ethos Group?

• It supports our school in developing Christian distinctiveness.
• It promotes our school Christian Values: Respect, Joy, Friendship, Perseverance, Wisdom and Thankfulness. 
• We report to governors and school leaders on what we have thought about and discussed.
• We work with other adults to develop positive working relationships.
• Work of the Ethos Group is recorded in our School Development Plan and our meetings are minuted.

What do we do?

• Meet regularly to discuss aspects of our school’s commitment to our Christian ethos and values.
• We ask pupils their opinion about our school values and worship.
• We help plan our collective worship and take an active role in collective worship.
• We evaluate each collective worship to ensure the adults are promoting and teaching through the Christian Values.
• We try hard to develop our spirituality within school through spiritual development activities.
• Plan and hold Prayer Spaces during the school year that support our learning of Christian Values and recognise special events in school or the wider world. 
• Plan special experiences to enhance our learning in Religious Education.
• Develop reflective areas around school – keep them fresh and updated.

Our Focus This Year

• Leading worship through prayers, opening and closing of worship

• Leading services through song, prayer, readings

• Leading worship each half term on a key parable for each value (to develop a depth of understanding about each of our school values)

Make a Wish Board

To celebrate our Year 6 leavers, our Ethos Group made a "Make a Wish" board to display at their end of year performance. Families, staff and children then added their special wishes and hopes for them as they embark on their next exciting chapter!

Gratitude Jars

Gratitude jars were delivered to each class by our Ethos Group. The jars were then decorated and the children wrote their favourite memory of the year together with gratitude prayers.

Thank you Prayer July 2026

Our Ethos Group wanted to thank all of the staff at St Matthews for everything that they had done for the children this year and so wrote them a special prayer!

Dear God, 

As our school year comes to an end, 

we ask you Lord to look after all of the staff at St Matthews.

They have all worked extremely hard looking after us, 

we pray that they have a fun, relaxing and safe summer holiday.

Amen

The Parable of the Lost Sheep Worship June 2026

Our Ethos Group presented a wonderful worship to the rest of the school based on The Parable of The Lost Sheep. They highlighted how thankful Jesus was to find his sheep and how we are all individual and special.

At playtime the fun continued as they organised a special sheep hunt where each hidden sheep reminded us of the importance of finding, supporting and valuing others.

Easter Walk 2026

To celebrate Easter, The Ethos Group planned an Easter Walk around our school finishing at St Matthews Church. Children reenacted "The Easter Story" using both reflection and props. Highlights included; greeting Jesus with palm leaves as he entered Jerusalem, partaking in the hustle and bustle at the temple, with the finale at St Matthews Church sharing juice and biscuits (instead of bread and wine!), engaging in their very own "Last Supper".

Our Christian value this half term was respect. We presented a whole school assembly where we introduced ourselves and explained our job role within the school. Then we retold the bible story ‘The Good Samaritan’. We chose this story because it teaches us to be respectful of others and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

We ran a small competition where we asked children to write a Remembrance prayer. The chosen prayers were then displayed on a wooden cross which was displayed in church during our Remembrance service and then moved to school and displayed in the hall.

On Sunday 9th November, two members of Ethos group represented the school by laying wreaths outside church and reading the prayers they had written to the congregation. 

Our next ethos assembly is on the Christian value of Joy. We will be sharing the story ‘The Paralysed Man’ with the school. This story teaches us of the perseverance of friends and the joy they found when their friend was healed by Jesus.