The Teaching of Catholic Gospel (British) Values
St Edmund’s Catholic Academy is a Catholic School which seeks to live out the values of Jesus Christ.

As a Catholic school we are fully committed to the values contained within the Gospels. As modern British values have evolved from a time when we were historically Christian, our Gospel values and British values are fundamentally linked and interwoven. In 2011, the government defined British Values as democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.

We proudly promote these same values through our curriculum as a Catholic school as represented in our mission statement. This recognises every pupil is unique and created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Our framework for understanding British Values draws on the example of Jesus and His welcome and inclusion of all, which is the basis of Catholic Social Teaching.

The Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development (SMSC) as advocated by the Department for Education seeks to:

Enable students to develop self-knowledge

Enable students to distinguish between right and wrong

Encourage students to accept responsibility for their behaviour, and understand how they can contribute positively to the lives of those in their locality and to society more widely

Further tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions

Encourage respect for other people.

At St Edmund’s Catholic Academy we demonstrate this in our teaching and learning. Our curriculum is designed to enable every student to be the best that they can be, to be able to discern their vocation and to be well-equipped to follow it as active citizens in service to the world. While not exhaustive, the following table shows some of the ways in which we strive to meet the Gospel and British values everyday in our academy community.