How we embedded CST in our school

The new CSI Framework was going to be a challenge!

I’m sure every Catholic school in England and Wales was a bit overwhelmed when the new Catholic Schools Inspectorate framework was published in 2023 (link here). The descriptors for ‘outstanding’, were visionary but extremely challenging and, in some cases we feared, even unrealistic. In our school we soon got over the shock and started to embrace the challenge; after all, we wanted to be the best school we could be if it would mean helping the next generation of Catholics take the Gospel values into the world.

In terms of fulfilling the demands related to Catholic Social Teaching, which appears in all three sections of the framework - Catholic Life and Mission, Religious Education and Collective Worship - we knew from the framework that we would have to up our game. CLM 1.4 says, ‘pupils take a leading role in responding to the demands of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and are pro-active in finding ways of responding, locally, nationally and globally. They can clearly articulate the theology underpinning their actions’. Whoa, a ‘leading role’, they can ‘clearly articulate the theology’ behind it, all of our school community? Yes, this was going to be a challenge!

Catholic Schools Inspectorate Framework example descriptor

However, we were sure that we did have strong foundations to build on and our school was already doing so much to promote and live CST. The challenge was going to be helping students and staff realise that CST is not just in RE lessons and so our task was to create a kind of CST marketing campaign within the school.

Our plan was to:
- undertake a curriculum audit to pinpoint topics within the whole curriculum which link to CST (or could link)
- Create a way or clearly signposting CST in resources and any other communications
- Help the students and staff understand that the theology underpinning CST was not just confined to RE lessons - that it applies to many aspects of their school life.

But we were not going to be able to do any of this without training the whole staff in the history and the principles of CST. SLT gave us plenty of time to deliver it; Catholic ethos sessions as part of our usual Wednesday morning CPD sessions before school, the Middle Leader Conferences and whole staff twilight sessions and our staff retreat day.

But which CST principles?

The first challenge we encountered was that wherever you look, you cannot find a consensus on what CST actually is. We decided to make our message as simple as possible. We came up with our own set of six principles which we could most relate to our school.We decided upon:

- Dignity of the person
- Care for our common home
- Option for the poor
- Solidarity
- Dignity of work
- The common good

We then wrote our own short description, with assistance from CAFOD resources, for each one so that hopefully anybody in the school would understand it, recognising that the principle names are not enough by themselves.

So our simple decsriptions were created as follows:

- Dignity of the person: We believe that everyone is made in the image of God
- Care for our common home: Our world is a gift from God. Global warming affects the poorest families the worst
- Option for the poor: God's love is universal; he does not side with oppressors, but loves the poor and humble
- Solidarity: We stand side-by-side with our sisters and brothers, especially those living in poverty
- Dignity of work: Work is an essential part of human dignity so everybody should be able to participate. People should always come before profit.
- The common good: The fruits of the earth belong to everyone and should be shared. No-one should be excluded from the gifts of creation.

How do we make sure CST is underwood as ‘Catholic’?

Linking back to CLM 1.4 - we had to make sure students could clearly articulate the theology behind the principles. For example, we support a local food bank - but so does pretty much every school in te area (and thank God they do!). We posed the question: what really makes this 'Catholic' and not just 'being nice' or 'community minded'? Would they realise that when they are donating it is because they are living out the Gospel values? We therefore created a strapline which would appear with any priciple any time it was mentioned: '...because all life is sacred'. Simple! We felt those four words helped encapsulate everything we needed to say.

How could we help signpost CST consistently?

The next question was how could we ensure that the principles were communicated effectively, not only by RE teachers but all other staff. We decided upon a logo. We wanted the students to be involved with this and launched a 'Design a CST Logo' competition. The winners who captured the ideas we wanted to include and worked with our member of staff who is responsible for the school's branding to get it produced. It ended up being very simple; a circle to respresent the world, green in colour (so it would stand out against our school colours), a cross and the strapline.

Our school CST logo

How could we identify where CST was present throughout our whole school?

At our whole staff retreat day, we began our auditing process. The theme of the retreat was 'love one another as I have loved you'. We asked each department (including admin and support staff) to mindmap how they 'love one another'. We also asked them to consider how they promote and live out stewardship and 'dignity of of the person'. It was done in the spirit of celebrating how our school lives out Jesus' command and it seemed that staff enjoyed the process. It starter to slowly introduce to all staff that the Catholic life of the school wasn't just a prayer in tutor or in RE lessons; it was everywhere you looked within our school.

Admin Department Mind map on how they 'love one another'

Humanities Mind map on how they 'love one another'

 Next, at our Middle Leaders conference we showed the brilliant CAFOD history of CST video to start the process of embedding the language of CST. We asked them to start considering where CST links can be made in their curriculum. Our staff were very receptive to this; they even started to consider how they might include it more! For example, the subject leader of Drama began creating a scheme of work based around the context of ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ and linked this to The Common Good and how sharing the earth’s resources must be our priority… which of course is ’...because all life is sacred’. Then we had our all staff twilight session in which we delivered more training and gave the different curriculum areas time to populate a CST mapping document. It was fantastic to see each team enthusiastically documenting the various places they promote an ‘option for the poor’ or the importance of standing in solidarity with people who are treated unjustly. We launched the CST logo and asked staff to consider using it on resources, where relevant, to encourage students and teachers to make links to CST principles.

Posters to communicate the message consistently

To embed CST even further, we wanted to create posters as simple visual reminders. For each principle, we found an icon to represent it (we used the free online thenounproject.com website for the icons) and included our simple description. Heads of Departments were asked to provide an image which represented the CST links they were making in their curriculum areas so we could create posters for each department too. We also created on corridor display which has each principle (and corresponding principle logo) and examples and pictures of what we have done to support them. Whenever we are promoting a charity event we add the CST logo to help students to understand that there is a deeper meaning behind what we do in our Catholic school and to help them be able to realise the theology behind it which is that we do what we do ‘...because all life is sacred’.

 

Example curriculum area poster - English

Example curriculum area poster - RE

Example curriculum area poster - Geography

What's next?

We’re definitely not finished! Although we are happy with how well we have managed to embed CST so far, we need to continue to promote CST in our school, in our events, assemblies and in the curriculum. We will make sure that staff receive a refresher on CPD on CST every September and it will be included in the New Staff Induction Programme as staff’s awareness is key to this being successful. Our priority is that want to work on allowing students to lead on CST and have a few ideas for this in mind especially through working with our Student Council and Student ECO Groups. For example, some students have talked about us becoming a Fairtrade school as it links into so many of the principles and we are going to work on this with them next year.