Working and studying in a Catholic school should be a very special and rewarding experience. Our mission goes beyond that of secular schools. Often the key difference between ourselves and non-Christian schools is not what we do but why we do it! We are committed to the pursuit of excellence, which we define as “our personal best”. However this is not because we wish to secure a higher place in league tables but because we believe that all of us are created in the image of God and, as a consequence, have been given talents which it is our individual and collective responsibility to discover and develop. This belief provides rich soil for a ‘growth mindset’. Our Catholic Ethos at CNCS is informed by the teachings of our patron Saint John Henry Newman, articulated in The Newman Way. Newman, a leading Anglican, converted to Catholicism in 1845. At that time, following on from the Reformation, Catholicism was still seen as somewhat of an ‘underground’ religion and Catholics were still subject to forms of discrimination. Newman’s conversion shocked Victorian society but for the rest of his long life he made a huge contribution to the development of the Catholic Church in Britain. He was a prolific writer of hymns, meditations, prayers, an opera and of theological works. His most famous meditation, “The Mission of My Life” is our school prayer, and includes two key ideas which underpin our daily work at CNCS. Firstly he introduced the idea that we are all ‘links in a chain’. Though individuals, we are defined by our community; how we behave and what we think, say and do will have an impact on others. Secondly we all have some special work or service - unique to ourselves - that God wants us to undertake. We use this within our school to promote the concept of ‘vocation’; that our students are all called to do “some definite service” in the world and one of the central purposes of the education we provide is to prepare them for that. The final key idea that we take from the writings of St John Henry Newman was developed in a series of lectures which he gave in Dublin when he was asked to help establish the first Catholic university in Ireland. These were later published as the ‘Idea of a University’. Central to that idea was the belief that education (subject knowledge and understanding) was good in its own right. This helps us to reject the insistence by many, but not all, in government, politics, industry and business that education is purely functional and should simply serve the needs of the economy. We take a more holistic view of schooling - we believe in the education of the whole person. The commitment to the pursuit of excellence and the beliefs that we are all links in a chain together and that we each have a special work or service reserved for us apply equally to staff and students and are all embraced within and are wholly compatible with the concept of caritas - the Love which comes from God and works through us, expressed with joy.