Our Special Character

We are a special character school

We are a Roman Catholic School. We are part of St Mary’s parish in Wanganui. When you enrol your child here, as well as learning the New Zealand Curriculum they also learn daily a Special Character curriculum. We learn about our Catholic Faith, and what it means to put Jesus first in their lives. We follow a National Catholic Schools Special Character curriculum. Its divided into Strands.
Each Strand involves daily learning so that children can understand what our faith is all about. Each Strand is integrated into all our daily learning. Our Strands are : The Church, God, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Sacraments and The Communion of Saints. Our Faith development doesn’t stop there. There are daily prayers woven through all our activities. There is direct learning and teaching about Catholic Social Justice and how we put it into action in our school and community and there is explicit expectation that students here will undertake preparation in the Sacraments of Baptism, if they are not Baptised, Reconciliation and First Holy Communion.

At St Mary’s School your students learn to put their Faith into action when they :

• Give produce from our school garden to people in need.
• Visit Rest Homes and places of Social Need to entertain and share time with people who need company.
• Fund-raise to support Charities and People in Need in Emergency events.
• Fund-raise to subsidise the expense of Outdoor Learning experiences for our families in need.
• Attend a special Sunday whole school mass once a term at St Marys Church in central city with families.
• Attend week day masses at St Joseph’s Church.
• Bring our Special Character Learning home to share with our family each week.
• Undertake Special Character missions and projects and earning school merits in our Merit System.