Welcome back everyone.  I really hope you all had an amazing break.

We are now moving into our busiest term.   We’ve got exams, we’ve got residentials, we’ve got celebrations and we’ve got to sort out where all our new children are going for next year (and there’s a lot of them)!!

We’ve also got an amazing performance lined up for you all next week.  I managed to drop into a technical rehearsal of ‘The Greatest Show’ this morning – it’s going to be brilliant!  Please make sure you support our children by attending on either the Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday evening.  I know we’ve got a few tickets left for each performance (available here).

At the end of last term I wrote a blog that discussed our vision and values.  As our trust continues to grow, it was important to revisit our mission and core values.  Through negotiation with the staff team and the young people we have come up with the following.  Wendy received well over 400 responses from staff from all our schools and post 19 organisations. It certainly generated quite an amount of discussion.

I am delighted to be able to share with you the latest iteration.

The staff in all our organisations have the amazing responsibility of influencing our children and young people’s futures. We all play a part, none more important or significant than any other.

So, what makes our schools and organisations unique, what do we all really believe in?

The phase that captured our very being – our soul – our New Bridge family – was this:

CREATING MEANINGFUL FUTURES

I really love this phrase as it clearly (and succinctly) relates to each child and young person in every school and organisation.  It equally relates to the staff team – it speaks of positivity and optimism – the characteristics we definitely value as a trust.

The majority of people felt that our mission statement (the way we go about conducting our work) should remain unchanged:

LEARNING TOGETHER, LEARNING FOR ALL, LEARNING FOR LIFE

Stakeholders felt that this mission statement encompassed an inclusive approach, the value of every individual and the purpose of our work.

It was tricky to agree on a (small) number of key values that underpin all our work. The following were the favourites. A couple that didn’t quite make the cut were “pioneering” and “inclusive”. I feel that the inclusive nature of our work is encompassed in the mission statement. Here are the values that most of us could agree upon:

WE ARE CARING

WE ARE CREATIVE

WE ARE INSPIRING

WE ARE PASSIONATE

WE ARE INNOVATIVE

WE ARE COLLABORATIVE

WE TRUST EACH OTHER

I’d like to articulate how a couple of our values have a real meaning to our community.  Last week I received an email from a young person at Horizons who was going through a really difficult time.  She trusted the staff team enough to explain her feelings and allowed them to support her.  Later on, she emailed me to tell me how brilliant both John and Emma had been.  They cared.  They made a difference.  I said I’d mention them in my blog.  Two examples where our staff make a difference – I have no doubt I could mention another 800!!!

I’d still welcome ongoing discussion that relates to all of the above, so please feel free to email me directly at:

gquinn@newbridgegroup.org

Have a great weekend everyone – don’t forget your tickets for next week!

Graham

You can find all Graham’s previous blog entries here