Aims and Values

Our Mission is to provide an independent Catholic education for boys and girls of all faiths aged 0-18; to provide individual challenge towards holistic and balanced development, service and achievement for life and beyond; and to try to show our Faith by the way we live, showing care and consideration for each other, those around us and the environment.

Our Vision is to be an exemplar Edmund Rice School, with an enviable reputation amongst our peers, both as an organisation and for the services and facilities we provide, making us first choice for parents and pupils in our geographic area.

At St. Mary’s we provide a Christian school community in which pupils feel welcome, safe, recognised and known by name – supported by a framework of love, order, stability and affection. We strive to bring the Gospel to bear in all aspects of school life and policy.

Our aims, which embody the eight essentials of an Edmund Rice education “for the whole of our life, here and hereafter”, are:

• to enable pupils to achieve their fullest selves and the highest outcomes of which they are capable, encouraging excellence in all spheres in gratitude for the gifts God has given us
• to instil a lifelong appetite for the adventure of learning, a sense of compassion and service and a zest for living life to the full
• to develop informed, socially aware pupils with a strong sense of justice, who know what must be rightfully done and recognise their own ownership and responsibilities for the society and world around them
• to instil in our pupils an active concern for others, especially vulnerable others, and the infinite value of each individual person
• to create a true communion, where we see others as another self, sharing their joys and sorrows and welcoming and prizing their talents
• to nurture and develop spiritual growth and leadership in all staff and Governors so that they teach by witness and example in the privileged task of forming our young in our Christian-catholic traditions.

Our Edmund Rice Values are:

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