The Chronicle, Summer 2019

ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE 14

Becoming a Mission-led School By English Teacher Lauren Bray

In April, we were fortunate enough to host guest speaker Julian Astle, Director of Creative Learning and Development at the Royal Society of Arts. Astle has worked as Deputy Director of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit and as Senior Policy Advisor to the previous Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. Astle has also worked as a Post-Conflict Advisor to the British government in Whitehall, and to the United Nations in Bosnia and Kosovo. Invited to speak at St Edward’s as part of our academic inset programme, Astle delivered a compelling argument for the importance of becoming a ‘Mission-led School’. 

Since starting work here at St Edward’s in September of last year, I have experienced first-hand the philosophy which Astle articulates. Teddies is already a school which seeks to educate the whole child. Our classrooms are centres of open debate and discussion; we are creative, expressive and forward thinking. Our pupils are challenged and in turn they challenge others – in lessons, on the sports fields and in houses – ideas are shared, evaluated and developed. Exam grades are important, but we acknowledge that they are a fundamentally reductive metric – our true measure, as Astle believes, is how well prepared our school leavers are for the challenges of further study, employment and life in the modern world. Because of this, we do not ‘teach-to-the-test’ but beyond, igniting curiosity and encouraging ambition. This is not to say that our mission is achieved; as a school and as individual educators we must continue to adapt to the ever-changing world beyond our walls – the educational landscape is always evolving, our role is not to catch up but to lead the way.

Astle’s solution was clear - in an era of change, instability and polarisation, schools need to take brave decisions about what and indeed how they teach children. These decisions start with a mission. But what does a school with a mission look like? For Astle the answer is as simple as it is complex: a school with a mission is a school which has a clear shared purpose and a set of established values that converge to create a distinct identity.

Christopher Cornwell

Lauren Bray

Opening his discussion, Astle painted a picture of the world our current school leavers are about to enter. He spoke of the post-truth age, the rise of angry populism and the advent of the intelligent machine. In Astle’s view, liberal democracy and truth are under threat and education must provide a defensive vanguard. For Astle, the measure of a school should no longer, and perhaps should never have been, performance numbers gathered from high-stakes tests in “subjects that count” but a judgment on how well schools are providing a “complete and generous” education. This considered, we must confront the central question: how are we preparing our pupils to engage with, survive and improve the global landscape Astle describes? If public debates are dominated by the ‘deliberately offensive and the easily offended’ - how do we give our students a voice which will be heard? How do we equip them with the tools required to assess new information with both a critical and open mind?

Will Griffiths

Matthew Albrighton, Deputy Director Academic, and Julian Astle