Community

Kettleshulme St James is very lucky to be very much part of a wider community.

Not only does our School Family extend to include parents, governors and staff, but also to  the children's wider families, to the local village community, to former pupils and families and of course to the wider Parish of Whaley Bridge and the Diocese of Chester. 

Indeed our family reaches out to those beyond school to join us in all manner of activities from book sharing, to making music, from charitable ventures, to sharing all manner of skills and talents and working with others to protect our special environment.

We actively forge new friendships and connections, as we seek to learn from others and give the children opportunities to experience so much about life beyond the school itself.

We are always thinking of new ways to engage with the residents who live in our village. With this in mind we have set up termly 'Coffee Afternoons' for our residents. The purpose of these sessions is to create connections to those who live in our village with the children who attend the school. The children post individual invitations through the letterboxes of all of the houses in the village.

In the past we have also posted handmade 'Empowerment' cards through the letterboxes of our neighbours houses. These touched the hearts of many.

We have also been sure to invite local residents to attend our local services - at our recent Harvest Festival we even invited one of the residents to perform, which was most spectacular.

On one occasion we even took our Nativity Performance 'on tour' around the village - which the locals loved!

We have also been building up connections with a local care home. We took a minibus load of pupils over and they engaged in playing games and conversations with the residents. One resident even taught the children how to play draughts!

We don't have a large local 'catchment' area, we work hard to create one and so far I can confirm that we have done a really good job of this.