Modelo conceptual de Couto, Tiago, Gil y Faria

The mission statement on the front page of the prospectus reads:

“The school aims, within the Christian ethos of our Foundation, recognising each person’s supreme value and working in active partnership with parents, church and community: to provide high quality education based on Christian care; to promote innovative excellence in the specialist subjects; to develop everyone’s potential academically, socially and spiritually; and to equip all for

citizenship in our technological learning society.” (School prospectus 2011-12,

School motto and mission statement, page 1, italics added to anonymise the school).

Although this mission statement is posted in every classroom, it was not referred to by any pupil or any member of staff, over the 11 days, with the exception of the headteacher. However, this may not be uncommon in a secondary school – particularly in the case of a fairly long and complex statement like this.

Quite understandably, when questioned about the ethos, the headteacher referred to this mission statement:

SG: “Has the ethos changed much in the last six years (since the headteacher, NJ

joined) or stayed the same?”

NJ: “Erm, the Mission Statement which you will see in every room in the school hasn’t changed and that drives the ethos. TB (Executive head) led the writing of that, erm and raised its profile and very much gave this school a Christian character. When he became Executive Head and JR (Interim head) took over the day to day, JR did an awful lot without changing any of the wording, to enhance its meaning. So JR did a lot of really good work in terms of raising its profile in terms of strengthening the Christian ethos through the school, and then I’ve attempted in the last six months to then sort of build on that even further…… So I’ve talked in staff meetings and in worships about where it says there, ‘Recognising each person’s supreme value’, rather than just recognising in terms of growing people’s supreme values, in terms of equipping all for citizenship but actually equipping all to be role models or leaders in society. So not everybody can be a leader but everybody can be a role model, which for me has a very different meaning to just being a citizen.” (Interview transcript, Head Teacher NJ, 31/01/12).

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When prompted on the curriculum, the headteacher was keen to elaborate on how the Christian ethos was made manifest in lesson planning:

SG: “How do these words (about Christian ethos) actually impact on teaching and

learning?”

NJ: “Lots and lots of ways. I mean on a very obvious level, erm, in the last couple

of years we have actually asked staff to develop its explicitly Christian themed lessons within each scheme of work to aim to get one task per term which will explicitly come at the topic they are doing from the Christian ethos, Christian angle, and some element of Christian reflection. Now it might be an ethical issue, a sort of awe and wonder of creation. It might even be a mystery sort of issue but to encourage that kind of reflection about where God is in that issue, so we’ve got it explicitly developing throughout the curriculum regardless of the subject. And in fact especially not in RE and PSHE where it might be sort of part of that subject, no it’s part of the curriculum. But that’s just a fraction of it. It’s about getting the right, what we said earlier, what’s in the news today. It’s about going right back to the basic curriculum you are offering. Is it inclusive, does it give all pupils an opportunity to succeed?” (Interview transcript, Head Teacher NJ, 31/01/12)

This bold assertion by the school leadership that the mission statement was being translated into the curriculum was also supported by the staff governor.

“But I think all the staff were aware with him (JR) in charge that we had to be looking at how our lessons, how our behaviour reflected the ethos of the school. Were we just teachers or were we teachers in a Church of England school? And again, were we governors or were we governors of a Church of England school and is that different? And you were constantly asked to reflect upon that. We had an INSET part where we were looking at a lesson plan; we were given a lesson plan for a History lesson and another one for an RE lesson and we had to say, ‘How could this be ... Where’s the Christian twist in this, where’s the faith that we can put through? What’s the problem with this? It was about witches in an English lesson I think as well. And, of course, part of the gothic genre scheme of work you are bound to come across super natural and so on, but then how do you balance that for the Christian ethos. It was a very interesting exercise to do and I think having taught in some many other schools this is different, it is very different here.” (Interview transcript, Staff Governor CP, 22/05/12, brackets added).

In May 2010, the Bishop Pritchard School was judged to be an ‘outstanding school’ by Ofsted.

The following month, June 2010, the diocesan inspection also found the school to be outstanding. This was attributed, in part, to the ethos of the school:

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“The strong Christian ethos has had a significant impact on the personal

development and academic achievement of all the pupils.” (SIAS Report,

Bishop Pritchard School, June 2010, p.2).

While the ethos has contributed to the educational outcomes of the school, is this mainly due to the manifest aims of the school outlined in its mission statement? The clear Christian direction provided by the leadership of the school may be, in many ways, a necessary condition for success but is it, of itself, sufficient? In order to discover the main reasons for success, it was necessary to probe more deeply into the life of the school using ethnographic research methods.