Catholic Social Teaching

The principles of Catholic Social Teaching guide us, as staff and children, in how to live out our lives.

The nine principles we follow can be seen in our Catholic Social Teaching keys seen below.

1. Human dignity – policies and strategic decisions that our school takes promote the value and worth of each person – both pupils and staff - as children of God.
2. Common good – as a school we promote diversity and inclusion among staff and pupils, and, like our vision statement says, enabling everyone to achieve more than they ever thought possible, wherever they are in the world.
3. Participation – supported by the school's vision of enabling all to succeed and make a difference to the world by serving God through helping others, we expect all in our community to actively participate in society .  This is something which we believe should be experienced by all people across the world, and we aim to educate children, as future leaders, to ensure all have the right to participate in decisions that affect that lives.
4. Subsidiarity - Oscar Romero said "Those who have a voice must speak for those who are voiceless".  We teach the children to stand side by side with their brothers and sisters to ensure that everyone has a say.
5. Promoting peace – as another of our House Patron's, Mahatma Gandhi, said, "Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong". Our school value of forgiveness helps us to pursue peace at all levels. We promote reconciliation, forgiveness and understanding between members of our school community as well as the wider world.
6. Solidarity – emulating our House Patron, Claudette Colvin, we foster the desire and ability to stand up for others who treated badly, so that a sense of social justice is embedded in the values of children, and adults, as we journey through life.
7. Distributive justice - One of our core beliefs is EQUITY over equality - meaning that in order to be fair, some people require additional support or preferential treatment.
8. Stewardship – with the children, we nurture a care for all of God's Creation, but as a school, we also try to be a sustainable body, utilising the Earth's resources as responsibly as we can.  
9. Option for the poor – as well educating those in our community to make preferential options to support those who are poor, as a school we also ensure that we make the extra effort to support pupils who are ‘poor’ in the broadest sense of the term. This can be those who are educationally poor but also those who are materially poor.

To learn more about Catholic Social Teaching, click the picture below.

As a school we are constantly working with the children and community to grow in our knowledge of how to live out the Catholic Social Teaching principles in our daily actions.  We support children in their understanding of what it means to demonstrate each principle. The children at St Thomas More's explore these not only through liturgical prayer and RE but also throughout our wider curriculum.   

Pupils at St Thomas More's are aware of what is happening in the world, their community and our school and use this to serve God by serving others.

Weekly Disciples

Being a disciple of God and helping children to understand how God wants us to act is something we are passionate about at St Thomas More's.

Weekly disciples are one of the ways in which children can explore, encourage and understand how they can put their faith into action. Each week each class chooses two weekly disciples that will guide and lead simple tasks as a reward for living out their faith. The children who were the disciples the week before vote in the new disciples and do this based on the actions they have seen them do and which school values and Catholic Social Teaching keys they have seen them living out.

Oscar Romero Award

Our school is very proud to have been one of the fore-runners in developing the Romero Award. This award is a framework which supports Catholic schools to recognise and celebrate what they do to promote Catholic Social Teaching (CST), challenging them to weave CST into the culture and ethos of the school – strategic planning, curriculum development and practical choices.

Named after one of our House Patrons, St Oscar Romero, the award aims to support schools in the advancement of the key Christian teaching of loving God and our neighbours through key Catholic Social Teaching principles. Our actions might not change the world, but it is a start. Romero once said, "We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realising that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.”