What does a 'Federation' mean for my child at this school?

Take a look at this short film which explains the way we work together with our sister school St Cuthbert's in Withington to ensure we are continually striving for the very best for our children.

When our two schools started working together in 2017 it was out of necessity; the leaders of one Catholic community reaching out to support another, to ensure that the children in both schools had a positive school experience, a broad curriculum, highly effective teaching, spiritual guidance, emotional support and a high quality environment for learning. Within two years, Ofsted inspected both schools. St Mary’s retained its ‘Good’ judgement and St Cuthbert’s secured a judgement of ‘Good’ for the first time in five years. Ofsted recognised that this partnership was both strong and beneficial to the two schools, professionally, financially and most importantly in terms of the positive impact on educational provision for the children.

Following this, the governors of both schools agreed to set up a joint committee to look at the possibility of a permanent arrangement for joint working. We opened up lots of questions as part of our discussions, mainly relating to our desire for the two schools to retain their unique identity, uniform, mission and status within their own Parish family. We looked at how other Catholic school Federations in the city had been set up and how they were working: Our Lady’s and Holy Name; St Edmund’s and St Patricks’. Both schools were very positive about how it was working for them. Noting and mentioning many of the same positives we had found over the last three and a half years.

In January 2021 all stakeholders agreed that the two schools should form a formal' Federation' this was written in to statute on January 4th 2021.