- Telephone: 01282 771146
- Email: office@st-john.lancs.sch.uk
St John the Baptist Roman Catholic Primary School Love One Another
Religious life of our school
Catholic Schools Inspection Report 2025
Friday Rosary Club
Each week parent's will receive a copy of The Wednesday Word so that we can share the Sunday's Gospel with you and your family.
Through The Wednesday Word, The Gospel is sent out (as in the Parable of the Sower and the Seed). This creates an opportunity for God's Word to be present in each child's family home - sharing Sunday's Gospel, nurturing family faith and effectively enhancing the home, school and parish partnership.
ST JOHN'S SCHOOL HYMN
House Saints
St John’s have 6 special Saints who are the names of our school ‘reward system’ house point teams. St Cecilia, St John Bosco, St Teresa of Calcutta, St John 11, St Bernadette and St Francis. The children are allocated into a different Saint's group each year and house points are given for amazing work and kind behaviour. Throughout the year, our whole school celebrates these Saints on their feast days and in assemblies and we pray to these Saints appropriately.
At St John's, we have a set of virtues that are directly linked to the RE curriculum, Gospel values and our behaviour curriculum. These virtues are introduced every half term and through our whole school and class worships, we teach behaviour through these virtues so the children will be witnesses of God. Our child centred approach, using imagery of bees, includes Bible references, stories, hymns, songs and inspirational acts.
Please click on the 'school videos' link below to see videos of special worships, masses, assemblies and performances of our school family celebrating our school ethos and religious life.
Please visit our Faiths Friends page below to see all the hard work our wonderful Faith Friends get up to as they promote our school mission statement and ethos throughout the school year!
We had a beautiful Ash Wednesday Mass in our school hall on Wednesday 5th March. Our Faith Friends read their readings and prayers beautifully and our altar servers participated wonderfully. Thank you to our parishioners and families who joined us to celebrate the beginning of our Lenten journey.
Year 6 had a special and visit to Raza Jamia Masjid Mosque. Year 6 caught the train and were kindly met and escorted to the Mosque. There, they explored and learnt about the prayer rooms, wash rooms and community centre. Year 6 asked some wonderful questions and they learnt a lot about the Islamic faith and Mosque. They had a very enjoyable time and their behaviour was commented on by the members of the Mosque as being exemplary.
We had a beautiful Christmas Read Around in the hall. We read the Christmas story, sang hymns and said beautiful prayers. Thank you to all of our families that attended to reflect and pray with us.
STAY AND PRAY The children in year 3 planned and delivered a beautiful celebration of the word for their families with a focus of preparing for Advent. They said traditional and personal prayers, read and reflected on scripture, sang hymns and listened to music. Thank you so much to all our families that attended and prayed with us. The children loved reading all the kind and positive feedback that was left for them.
We had a special assembly this morning that commemorated past and present soldiers on Remembrance Day. Mrs McKeating led the assembly all about Remembrance Day and a lot of our children brought a poppy from home that was filled with names of people and soldiers that they wish to pray for and remember. The poppies were offered up to our altar in the procession. Our whole school later participated in the two minutes silence together, at 11am, in the school hall.
All of our classes made beautiful poppies, wreaths and a Remembrance display to commemorate past and present soldiers in November. Our children have also organised and led celebrations of the word in classes and in the chapel with a focus of Remembrance.
Our Monday morning worship is a prayerful and respectful time for our school family collectively to pray, celebrate the Gospel, sing and reflect in silence. Each week, our new VIP children take part in a beautiful procession, carrying their class worship candles, to collect their VIP badges from the school altar.
We have planned and delivered beautiful worships this half term based on our behaviour focus 'be truthful and a peacemaker'. The children have enjoyed planning and participating in our worships. We have reflected in silence, listened to music, explored scripture, said prayers, responded to prayers and sang hymns. Thank you to our school Governors for joining us for a special class worship, too.
We had a lovely time meeting Samantha today to deliver Judaism workshops for all of our classes! She brought lots of artefacts, power point presentations and videos to support her workshops. The children all listened intently and asked great questions.
Thank you so much to everybody who bought a raffle ticket to raise money for Mission Possible- as you can see, each chain was an entry into the raffle and we managed to make a huge amount of money for the charity!
Our flowers gardens for Mary were proudly displayed to our parishioners and parents and are now displayed in Church for the rest of our parish community to see!
Well done to everybody who entered and made a beautiful flower garden for Mary! Congratulations to our winners Archie, Lily-Ray, Colby and Lucy!
Thank you so much to everybody who entered our whole school competition to create a flower garden for Mary in May. We were overwhelmed with the amount of amazing and creative projects! It was a very hard decision for our two Governors and parishioners, Mrs Schofield and Mrs Bracken, to choose an EYFS, KS1 and KS2 winner! Please see all the gorgeous entries below.
We celebrated a beautiful Crowning of Mary mass in Church with our families and parishioners. Our 2023 pupils of the year processed down the aisle with flowers donated from our families and Rosie our pupil of the year crowned Mary. It was a special service. All the flowers were then donated to church, local care homes, people in our parish who are poorly or suffering from bereavement and our past pupils who gained their angel wings.
A huge thank you to Imran who kindly visited our school to deliver an assembly and workshops all about Islam for all of our classes. The children and staff thoroughly enjoyed his visit and learnt so much about the stories of Muhammad, 5 pillars, prayer, Ramadan, the Qur’an, special objects and the Mosque!
All of our classes made Father Joseph birthday filled with special messages for his birthday. He was delighted! Happy birthday Father Joseph!
We celebrated a beautiful Easter Read Around Worship in the hall with our families, Father Joseph and parishioners. Our teachers read the Easter story and we all sat together to sing hymns together and say special prayers.
We had a lovely Easter Mass in school with our lovely families and parishioners.
Our school family took part in a huge Lent walk to raise money for Caritas, Red Nose Day and Mission Possible! All the children really enjoyed themselves and completed the full distance! Thank you so much to all of our lovely volunteers who gave up their time and helped us on our walk! We managed to raise lots of money for the charities.
We had a lovely Ash Wednesday service in our school hall where we all got ashes on our heads to mark the start of Lent.
All year groups made wonderful, happy pictures with messages for the sick people in our parish. Father Joseph was so pleased and will take these to the individuals on his visits to bring them a little joy and love.
Year 1 had a lovely time visiting Church to learn about signs and symbols as part of their RE topic. They asked some great questions and responded with brilliant and meaningful answers.
Congratulations to our pupils who offered their services to make wonderful altar servers. They had a lovely blessing mass to celebrate.
All of our school family surprised Father Allan with special class cards. We are so grateful for all he has done for our school and parish and wish him the best of luck in his new parish!
Thank you to all of our families who donated to Children in Need. Our children had great fun wearing their pyjamas!
Thank you so much to our generous families who kindly sponsored our Year 1 and Year 2 children for their Bunny Hop walk for Pendleside Hospice! We managed to raise £820.38 for the wonderful charity!
We all had fun wearing red for Red Nose Day! We raised over £155, thank you!
It was lovely to have our families back in school to celebrate our Christmas Read Around together. It was a beautiful worship as we told the Christmas story and sang our Christmas hymns in a candle lit hall.
Our lovely children made beautiful Christmas cards for the staff and residents of our local care homes this Christmas. These were sent and received with lots of love 🎄
All our classes made and wrote Christmas cards with personal messages for our adopted grandparents again this year. We love keeping in touch with each other throughout the year ❤️
We are enjoying our Monday assemblies learning and celebrating ways of being a good friend! Today we wrote a friendship poem together as a whole school after discussing the important qualities of friendship.
Our whole school celebrated a wonderful mass for the Ascension and Crowning of our Lady.
Our Year 1 and Reception children enjoyed a collective worship together celebrating Our Lady, in the month of May. We learnt about Mary and we all decorated flowers to make a beautiful altar display for Mary.
Here are our wonderful canvases, designed by each class to retell the story of God’s creation, proudly displayed in our school hall.
A huge thank you to our generous families for donating so many Operation Christmas Child boxes for children around the world this Christmas!
Our amazing Diwali display ⭐️
Our classes loved celebrating Diwali this week! We had RE lessons teaching and learning about Diwali, virtual online workshops with authors reading their story books on Diwali and live draw alongs to make Rangoli patterns, a visit from West End Schools teaching the story of Rama and Sita through dance, creating Diwali lanterns and Diya lamps and also sitting together to have a special Diwali celebration feast! Please visit our class pages to see pictures and videos of our Diwali celebration week!
Thank you to all our lovely families that contributed to our Remembrance worship with names of past and present soldiers to commemorate during November. Lest we forget.
Our classes have been busy making poppies for our whole school Remembrance display on the corridor to commemorate past and present soldiers during November.
Our school family enjoyed dressing as something 'P for Pudsey' to raise money for Children in Need. We all donated £1 each for the charity.
On Friday 17th September, all of our St John’s family wore jeans to raise money for this wonderful charity!
Today we held a beautiful service to unveil our special friend Tia’s memorial bench. Tia’s mum, dad and grandad, Mrs Bracken, Mr Astin-Kilgallon and our year 5 and 6 children all joined the service. Lovely speeches, poems and prayers were all said, as well as Tia’s favourite hymns and songs that were beautifully sang. At the end of the service, Father Allan blessed the bench. We look forward to our children enjoying sitting on the bench and showing it everlasting love and friendship, in memory of our wonderful Tia.
We enjoyed celebrating ‘International Nurses Day’ in our whole school worship today! Our children made beautiful cards, poems and messages to show and give appreciation to our inspirational and wonderful nurses.
Year 1 and Year 2 had a lovely virtual assembly with Leah from Pendleside Hospice to celebrate the amazing money raised by our generous families for this wonderful charity! The classes learnt a lot about Pendleside Hospice and were excited to meet the mascot in the assembly!
On the 23rd March, all our classes took part in a whole school teams assembly to reflect on the 1 year anniversary since our first national lockdown was announced, which our Bishop requested was marked with a National Day of Reflection and Prayer. Each class read a prayer for each colour of the rainbow. Each colour represented a different theme of prayer. These rainbows of reflection prayers were a beautiful way for our whole school to reflect and pray with each other. We then all held a 1 minute silence for the anniversary of the Coronavirus lockdown.
On Monday 22nd March, our staff and children wore odd socks in recogition of World Down Syndrome Day!
On Friday 19th March, we had a super hero day at school for Red Nose Day! All our children and staff wore something red or dressed as a super hero to acknowledge this special day. Thank you to all our lovely families for their donations.
Over Christmas, each class adopted a 'grandparent' in our local community to support and bring some Christmas cheer to over the festive period. Each class made their adopted grandparent a beautiful Christmas card filled with messages and jokes, along with festive pictures. Our adopted grandparents were thrilled by this. They have been watching our Christmas plays online too! We look forward to keeping in contact with them in the new year.
All of our classes wanted to cheer up the staff and residents of our local care homes this Christmas, so we all made them Christmas cards filled with special messages and jokes inside. We managed to bring Christmas cheer to the Hilton, Woodside, Spring Cottages and Palace House! We wish them all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
All of our classes enjoyed learning about Christingles and making their very own. We celebrated a beautiful whole school Christingle service outside with lovely readings, carols and prayers. Please see our school videos section for the service.
Thank you so much to all of our generous families and staff who have filled all of these Operation Christmas Child boxes! Your kind donations will really make a difference to a lot of children at Christmas this year.
Our children wanted to help cheer up the staff and patients of Preston and Longridge Hospital so they made wonderful Christmas pictures with special messages on to display on their windows and wards!
Thank you everybody for your donations!
Year 1 and Year 2 were so pleased to be asked to support Burnley Talking Newspapers during this festive period. Year 1 read the Christmas story and told Christmas jokes. Year 2 read Christmas poems and sang Christmas carols. They all did such a beautiful and wonderful job.
We painted our nails blue this week in support of 'World Diabetes Day!'
On Friday 13th November, we had a mad hair day in school to celebrate and raise money for Children in Need!
As we are in the month of November, each class decorated a poppy for our beautiful, whole school Remembrance display to commemorate soldiers, past and present, who fought and continue to fight to protect our country. Lest we forget.
Here is our God’s Wonderful World display, filled with photographs of what our school children treasured and were thankful for during lockdown. All the photographs are so precious and beautiful! Thank you to everybody who contributed to this lovely display. Can you find your picture?
Our KS1 and KS2 children and staff really enjoyed online learning sessions with Jeremy who extended our learning about Judaism and the day in the life of a jewish child. We learnt all about jewish artefacts, worship, food/drink and clothing. Thank you Jeremy for a wonderful and very informative morning!
Samaritans Purse Operation Christmas Child. Recently, your child was sent home with a leaflet about this charity. If you and your family would like to prepare and pack this love in a box for children around the world, who are less fortunate than us, then please send in a donation £5 in a NAMED envelope, as this is critical to cover shipping and project costs. Once the donation has been received, your child will receive a shoe box for you to lovingly prepare and help make a difference this Christmas.
World Homeless Day. This week, our whole school worship assembly was based around the homeless and what we can do to help. It was a very informative assembly that made us realise just how lucky we are. As it is ‘World Homeless Day’ on Saturday 10th October, we are asking for non-perishable items to be brought into school next week. The items will be collected and quarantined for 72 hours before being delivered to the Salvation Army in Burnley.
Congratulations to our new GIFT Team members of 2020-2021, Holly, Sophie, Ruby, Amelia, Max, Rowan, Oscar and Alexander. We were so impressed with their letters of application and look forward to working with this academic year. Love, Miss Dewhurst and Mrs Taylor x
Here is our 2019-20 RE display filled with pictures of all of our GIFT team, whole school, parish and wider community fundraisers, activities, masses, liturgies and events before school closed in March! We have also kept the display updated in lockdown with our beautiful RE lessons, assemblies, ceremonies, prayer and tasks at home. We are so pleased with how much we achieved, despite the circumstances and will enjoy sharing this display with everyone when we are back in school together 💗
In school on a Monday morning, we would usually have a whole school assembly in the hall. However, we have been asking our children to watch weekly online assemblies at home to help us keep Jesus and His messages in our hearts. Here is Felicity and Sienna enjoying our 'You'll Never Walk Alone' assembly. We are so proud of how they sat and listened to the Gospel stories and answered the questions, just like they were in school. Beautiful girls, thank you for sharing this lovely video!
Here are some pictures of beautiful Mary gardens that our children made to celebrate and honour Our Lady in the month of May.
Crowning of Our Lady
In May, we would usually have a mass in church to celebrate and crown Mary. So our keyworker children in school decided to organise their own little ceremony and crown Our Lady in our school chapel.
As we are in the month of May, our children made beautiful Rosary bead creations at home to pray and give thanks to Jesus and Mary.
Lord, help us to spread positivity during this difficult time. May we be kind to one another and learn to appreciate the small things in life. We give thanks to those amazing souls who continue to work endlessly to fight this virus. Amen.
Here are just some of our teachers wonderful ‘Chase the Rainbow’ artwork and displays, hoping to bring about some happiness for their neighbours and community at this difficult time.
FRIDAY 27TH MARCH
We have a whole school project in place for this weekend and we would love it if our community would join in with us too!
Please could you create a ‘Chase the Rainbow’ piece of artwork for a front window in your house, to help brighten your neighbours, passers-by and community spirit during this difficult time. You can draw, paint, colour, make, or build any size of rainbow that you wish. You could even write an uplifting message to go with it.
Many families around the country have already taken part in this beautiful gesture, so we’d love it if you could join in too! The more, the merrier!
Let's make the world a brighter place. Stay home, stay safe, don't worry, we'll get through this. 
To all of our families, friends and wider community who work for the NHS, who continue to risk your lives to save others, you are all truly amazing. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We thought of you when we were clapping tonight. The response from communities around the country was so moving and emotional. God bless you all, stay safe.
We had great fun dressing in our active wear and walking a mile for Sports Relief! Thank you for all the generous donations!
Year 1 and Year 2 held a lovely Liturgy celebrating God's wonderful world, family and Lent. They sang hymns, said prayers and offered up their Lenten promises for Father Allan to bless. Thank you to Father Allan and all our fabulous parents who helped us to celebrate.
Thank you to everybody who donated food for the homeless this Christmas. We are very grateful for your support.
Year 3 performed the nativity in french for our Year 2 children. It was lovely and the children did so well.
Thank you to the amazing 'Bethany Choir' for performing lots of wonderful songs for us! All the children enjoyed listening to you and learning about the charity.
We raised lots of money for 'Children in Need' by dressing as something beginning with P! Everybody looked great!
Our school remembered, prayed and showed respect for all past and present soldiers by buying and wearing poppies, decorating their class doors with wreaths and taking part in a whole school worship, where the school fell silent for 2 minutes at 11am.
Here are some pictures of Bishop John Arnold, blessing our children, corridors, Chapel and new 'Our Lady' statue.
St John's were honored to host the GIFT Team Celebration Day on Wednesday 2nd October 2019 for 15 School GIFT Teams from the Salford Diocese. 14 beautiful prayer stations based on the 'Beattitudes' were set up around school, all for the staff and children to reflect and participate in various activities. The GIFT Teams also put together wonderful presentations for everyone to enjoy. In the afternoon, a lovely mass was organised and delivered in St John the Baptist Church, for all the new GIFT Team children to join in and be commisioned by Bishop John Arnold. St John's were very lucky for Bishop John Arnold to visit our school, to bless our children, the corridors, the Chapel and our new 'Our Lady' statue. Thank you to Mrs Mckeating and staff for all their hard work and making the day so special.
To help spread Pope Francis' message to heal the world, every year group decorated their classroom door with a theme about how we can all help to protect our environment.
Thank you to everyone who attended and donated to our GIFT Team’s Macmillan Cake and Coffee morning, in our school hall, on Friday 27th September. A wonderful £131.70 was raised! Thank you to everyone for your generosity and support.
Congratulations to our new GIFT Team of 2019-2020!
Here is our new beautiful 'Our Lady' statue that was bought from the money raised from our 'Mother's Day Afternoon Tea'. Thank you to everyone to kindly donated and supported this event.
We had a lovely Easter Read-Around in the school hall.
This morning, we had a beautiful Mass to celebrate Our Lady which was led by our Pupil Nominees. The children from each year group brought flowers that were placed at the bottom of Our Lady statue. Some of these flowers were then distributed to a few of our families from our community, to help cheer them up after experiencing some difficult times in their lives. The rest of the flowers were then kindly arranged by Mrs Armfield and placed in the Our Lady Chapel in Church.
Our Mother's Day Afternoon was a huge success! Our school hall was packed and we couldn't thank all our special mothers, grandmothers,aunties and friends who attended enough! We all had a great afternoon giving thanks to all mothers, by enjoying lots of complimentary cakes with hot cups of tea, entering raffles with super prizes and buying gifts from table top stalls. Thank you to our extremely kind parishioners for helping to serve the refreshements and our School GIFT Team for helping to organise this event. We raised an amazing £384.75 that will contribute to buying a new Our Lady Statue. Thank you.
A huge well done and thank you to our lovely Year 1's, Year 2's and School GIFT Team for taking part in the sponsored 'Pendleside Hospice's Bunny Hop!' It was enjoyed by all and the children loved their certificates, bunny ears and creme eggs for completing the walk. Thank you to Pendleside Hospice for their support with this event and for all their wonderful, hardwork that they do for us.
Our Year 1's, Year 2's and GIFT Team enjoyed decorating many cakes and biscuits to sell at our bake sale to raise money for Pendleside Hospice!
Here are our wonderful and festive classroom doors that have been decorated for Christmas!
Thank you to Militarycation for visiting St John's and organising an assembly to teach our children about the importance of Remembrance Day and conducting the 2 minute silence at 11am. It was such a special and moving experience for all.
St John's has been remembering past and present soldiers and commemorating 100 years since WW1 ending this November by creating beautiful wreaths and displays for their classroom doors. A wonderful display was also created for all to see outside school, each poppy filled with names of loved ones who we wish to remember.
A huge thank you to everyone who entered our 'God's Wonderful World' photography competition! Every single entry was amazing and so different! Thank you to our special guest and professional photographer, Chris Mckae, for judging the competition. Well done to our EYFS winner, Kai, our KS1 winner, Oscar, our KS2 winner, Scarlet-Rose and our Adult winner, Miss Marshall. We really appreciate the effort that everybody made who entered and attended to celebrate our gallery.
Thank you to everyone who attended our Macmillan Coffee and Cake Morning on Friday 28th September 2018. We managed to raise £841 for our Coffee Morning! A huge well done and thank you to Mrs Clough who 'Braved the Shave' for the Macmillan Charity and raised another £400! This brought our final total to £1241! We are all very proud of her.
All of our St John's children have written a small prayer for the new school year, which have been placed on our 'New Beginnings' display in our beautiful autumn themed school Chapel.
On Friday 21st September 2018, St John's celebrated their first whole school mass for New Beginnings. Congratulations to our new School Councillors and new GIFT Team members who were announced during the mass. Thank you to our families and Parishioners for joining us after our mass for tea and biscuits.
