As a Roman Catholic School – Mount St Joseph strives to be a community of learners, believers and friends. Our ethos is underpinned by the gospel values of serving others, tolerance, compassion and forgiveness. As a community of learners, believers and friends, we are committed to the spiritual, moral, educational and social development of all our community.

1 John 1:7 “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another….”

We proudly live by our school mission of being a “Community of Learners, Believers and Friends”.  This mission statement is derived from our charism as a Sisters of Cross and Passion school; the school was founded to serve the local community in 1902. We seek to work in the spirit of the Sisters of the Cross and Passion who founded our school – striving to bring the compassion of Christ to the suffering and deprived, combating materialism and spiritual emptiness and teaching an understanding of the values of Christian family life and community responsibilities, locally, nationally and globally.

As a community of learners we aspire to achieve our full, academic potential in a happy, safe and caring environment.

As a community of believers, we aim to develop a full awareness of our spiritual and moral responsibility and a deepening love and understanding of our faith.

As a community of friends, we influence the people around us by using our unique gifts and talents to develop one another socially and culturally to build a better world.

Our community is bound together by the faith it proclaims. We celebrate the primacy of the spiritual and moral life, the dignity of the person, the importance of community, caring, social justice and the common good.

We seek to have Christ at the centre of all that we do in school and to give the students in our care the opportunity to grow spiritually in a loving worshipping community. We welcome children of other faiths and respect their beliefs and culture.

We believe that every child is uniquely created and loved by God and called by Him to fulfil a special purpose. It is our privilege to help each child to identify, nurture and use his/her talents to build a better world. To this end we will work in partnership with parents, parishes, the community of schools and with the wider community.

‘A Community of Learners, Believers & Friends’

As a school community, we believe this is effectively done when:

• We develop a curiosity for knowledge
• We build a range of independent learning skills and develop enquiring minds
• Staff inset on teaching and learning is driven through Professional Development Communities where best practice is shared and celebrated
• We strive to achieve the highest academic results and to realise the potential of every student
• We foster a sense of personal identity and self-worth
• We encourage students and select tasks to enable them to become self-reflective and independent in their learning
• We develop students in enabling them to become learning resources for their peers within their classrooms
• We construct our curriculum to allow maximum choice and flexibility, so that programmes in Key Stage 3 and 4 have high personalisation
• We create a climate that stimulates excitement about learning
• We listen, to students, colleagues and expert practitioners to inform our practice
• We work hard to contextualise learning
• We share the learning objectives with students making them aware of the success criteria enabling them to see the purpose in what they are learning
• We share the learning journey each student will go on so that students are aware of what they will be learning and why
• We recognise that the most effective learning is collaborative and social
• We work towards building community – locally, nationally and internationally in order to develop active citizens of the world
• We foster a lifelong love of learning, and equip learners to cope with the rapidly changing needs of the technological world in which we live
• We develop students who are spiritually aware of the world they live in