BDMAT
Nonsuch Primary School is part of the Birmingham Diocesan Multi-Academy Trust (BDMAT).
Vision and Values of the Trust
The underpinning vision of the BDMAT is based on the following values:
- We are made in the image of God, all people are of equal worth, to be treated with dignity, given hope and aspirations and to live in community.
- We believe Jesus came to give life in all its fullness. We aim to deliver excellence in education and want the very best outcomes for children and young people so that they can achieve their fullest potential. With many schools reporting that they feel under increasing pressure to make artificial choices between academic rigour and the well-being of their pupils, we are unequivocal in our message that there is no such distinction – a good education must promote life in all its fullness. It is about ‘educating the whole person’.
We are therefore committed to our Academies:
Educating for Dignity and Respect
Human dignity, the ultimate worth of each person, is central to good education. The basic principle of respect for the value of each person involves continual discernment, deliberation and action and schools are one of the main places where this happens, and where the understanding and practices it requires are learned. This includes vigilant safeguarding. It is especially important that the equal worth of those with and without special educational needs and disabilities is recognised in practice.
Educating for Wisdom, Knowledge and Skills
Good schools foster confidence, delight and discipline in seeking wisdom, knowledge, truth, understanding, know-how, and the skills needed to shape life well. They nurture academic habits and skills, emotional intelligence and creativity across the whole range of school subjects, including areas such as music, drama and the arts, information and other technologies, sustainable development, sport, and what one needs to understand and practise in order to be a good person, citizen, parent, child, employee, team or group member, or leader.
Educating for Hope and Aspiration
How we learn to approach the future is crucial. Good schools open up horizons of hope and aspiration, and guide pupils into ways of fulfilling them. They also cope wisely with things and people going wrong. Bad experiences and behaviour, wrongdoing and evil need not have the last word. There are resources for healing, repair and renewal; repentance, forgiveness, truth and reconciliation are possible; and meaning, trust, generosity, compassion and hope are more fundamental than meaninglessness, suspicion, selfishness, hardheartedness and despair.
Educating for Community and Living Well Together
Education needs to have a core focus on relationships and commitments, participation in communities and institutions and the qualities of character that enable people to flourish together. We believe our living is inextricably involved with others, sharing our humanity and life on a finite planet. If those others are of ultimate worth, then we are each called to responsibility towards them and to contribute responsibly to our communities.
Given these basics focusing on the pursuit of wisdom, knowledge and skills, on trust and hope in the good as more fundamental than the bad, on the centrality of relationships and community, and on the dignity of each person, there is endless scope for deeper thinking and further applications, improvisations and creativity. This is what we mean by ‘life in all its fullness’.
Christian Distinctiveness Underpins the Principles about How We Work
When decisions are made at any level in the Trust, they will be made with our values, as described above, clearly at the heart of the decision.
Our values will be reflected in the way people are treated, whether children, families or employees of the Trust. Jesus came to give fullness of life to all.
- There will be an expectation that all endeavour to live by the values whether students or employees.
- We will share responsibility for all of the children in all of the academies.
- Our Trust is one with a generous heart. All will be both givers and receivers.
Leadership at Trust Level and of our Individual Schools
Great leaders combine Humility with determination. We see this in the example of Jesus. They are the nurturing leaders, who do not want credit, but want success to sustain over a longer period of time, long after they are gone.
- Leaders will identify and include people who share the vision and can contribute to the direction of the Trust as well as having the skills and knowledge needed to meet the objectives.
- Our leaders will not shy away from facing and accepting brutal truths and realities of data, numbers and situations but at the same time they won’t lose hope of a better future.
- We will encourage our leaders to practice and encourage a disciplined approach towards their work life, maintaining a positive work/life balance.
We recognise that our leaders may come from a variety of different faith backgrounds or have no faith themselves. Our priority is to employ leaders that share the same values regarding education provision:
- Educating for Dignity and Respect
- Educating for Wisdom, Knowledge and Skills
- Educating for Hope and Aspiration
- Educating for Community and Living Well Together
Whatever a leader’s personal belief, we would be seeking to appoint leaders who uphold the ethos and values of the Trust and the uniqueness of their individual school.
The Uniqueness of the Individual Academy
The academies in the Trust will work collaboratively together on aspects of teaching and learning as appropriate and needed, but will still retain their individual character. Individual academies are responsible for deciding on and developing their own unique character/ethos, the way the teaching and learning is delivered and the curriculum it is delivered through, within the overarching value of providing ‘Life in all its fullness.’
