At St Patrick’s everything we do is centred on our special Catholic Identity.  We focus on the Gospel values and teaching children the importance of loving and respecting everyone as Jesus taught us. We follow the Come and See programme as recommended by the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. We want every child to be happy and enthusiastic learners of RE. The beliefs and practices of our faith lay firm foundations to our entire curriculum and permeate the day-to-day life of the school.

Our Faith

Our mission as a Catholic primary school is to provide a Catholic education that puts Christ at the centre of our school. To educate each other, to create community and to witness the Gospel Values:

• faithfulness and integrity;
• dignity and compassion;
• humility and gentleness;
• truth and justice;
• forgiveness and mercy;
• purity and holiness;
• tolerance and peace;
• service and sacrifice.

At St Patrick’s, our mission statement forms the absolute heartbeat of our school.

Our mission statement underpins our whole school culture and ethos; something which we are extremely proud of. In everything that we do, we remember we are blessed to work, pray and celebrate learning together.

Through works of charity our school community is able to live out their faith through helping others and becoming aware of the social injustices in the world. We provide many opportunities to enhance and develop the Catholic life of the school including:

• Advent/Lent projects- food collection for our local foodbank
• Red Sky Foundation fundraising
• First Holy Communion preparation
• Ukraine Support- helping our new families
• Remembrance services
• Macmillan fund raising
• CAFOD fund raising
• Liturgical Prayer Leaders working with their peers
• School Uniform Rail available for all families to help support the cost of living crisis

We put Christ at the Centre of everything we do in school.

First Holy Communion – we work in partnership with Fr Ligori & Fr Louis, our parish priests, and a team of dedicated catechists to prepare our Year 4 pupils to celebrate and receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist.

Sister Alphonsus, our parish sister, works with our children every week in school to deliver a prayer and rosary group in our new chapel.

Children also celebrate special times in our liturgical calendar such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. Celebrations include Nativity plays, Carol services, Children performing Stations of the Cross for both parents and parishioners, taking part in Remembrance services, The May Procession, Children taking part in our Trust wide celebration of ‘Footsteps into paradise’ at Durham Cathedral.

Our Year 3 and 4 children experience a residential retreat at the YMT village to develop their faith journey during their sacramental preparation. Our Year six children attend the YMT Diocesan Festival continuing in their formation.

Every year we celebrate our whole-school feast day where we celebrate our mission and reaffirm it with fund raising and awareness through creative tasks.

We have also been lucky enough to welcome a new community into our lives this year as many Nigerian Families have joined us to become part of our St. Patrick’s family. We recently celebrated a special Nigerian day with a day of learning about this wonderful new culture.

Collective worship at St Patrick’s

As a Catholic primary school collective worship plays a fundamental part of daily school life and enables us all to join together as one in prayer and worship. We celebrate collective worship daily and this takes several forms including Senior Leader Led whole school worship, Class led whole school liturgies, Class liturgies, attendance at weekly Mass in our parish Church as well as special feast days and Holy days of obligation. Every child is given the opportunity to experience worship in different ways and every child is given the opportunity to plan and evaluate acts of liturgical prayer.

Growing Closer to God – The Importance of Prayer at St. Patrick’s

In its simplest form, prayer is defined as “talking to God.” It is a personal time of opening our hearts to our Heavenly Father and bringing everything in our hearts to Him. Through the Apostle Paul, God asked us to pray. Prayer can be a powerful force for change in our lives, and the importance of doing it on a daily basis should be instilled in our children.

Communication is the foundation for success in any relationship. When we communicate openly and freely with each other, we learn to know each other as individuals. This principle also applies to our relationship with God. By talking to God, we can learn more about who He is and what plan He has for us.

Please enjoy looking at our gallery of pictures below to see some of the fabulous work that goes on at wonderful St. Patrick’s- where we live, love and learn together.