Headteacher's Blog Post - Saturday 26th September 2026

What a wonderful start we have had to this new academic year!

September is always an especially significant month for any school, bringing with it the excitement of new beginnings: new pupils and colleagues joining our community, pupils moving into new year groups, new opportunities to embrace and, of course, new challenges ahead. This September has felt particularly special as we begin an academic year which also forms part of our Sixtieth Jubilee celebrations, this marking six decades of Catholic secondary education at Bishop Vaughan!

Before the pupils returned, our staff gathered for two very full INSET days. We began the year, as we always seek to begin our work, in prayer. Alongside reviewing examination outcomes and looking ahead to our priorities for 2026-27, colleagues spent time considering teaching and learning, literacy, pastoral care, safeguarding and wellbeing, Additional Learning Needs and the Catholic life and mission of the school. Our second INSET day placed particular emphasis on professional learning and our continued commitment to literacy and high-quality teaching.

That focus on literacy is an important one for us. As I wrote in August, if we are to give our pupils the “wings” to pursue their ambitions, then reading, communication and access to powerful knowledge have to remain central to what we do. It was particularly valuable, therefore, to begin the year with staff reflecting together on disciplinary literacy and how we continue to ensure that every pupil can confidently access the language, ideas and knowledge of the different subjects they study.

We’ve also been delighted to welcome a number of new colleagues to the Bishop Vaughan family, as well as colleagues taking on new responsibilities. This year has seen the introduction of our new Pastoral and Progress structure for Lower and Upper School, strengthening the connection between pastoral care, pupils’ wellbeing and their academic progress. As ever, our intention is that every pupil should feel known, supported and encouraged to flourish.

Our pupils themselves have made a truly excellent start!  It’s always lovely to see our new Year 7 pupils gradually finding their feet, navigating their way around a much larger school than their last one and beginning to make Bishop Vaughan their own! Equally pleasing is seeing older pupils helping them to do so. It’s in those small moments of kindness, welcome and reassurance that the values of our school are often expressed most clearly – something which visitors regularly comment upon. Perhaps nowhere, though, have those values been more visible this month than in our Sixth Annual Festival of Peace. The Festival has become one of the most eagerly anticipated events in our calendar and there is a reason that we place it so deliberately at the beginning of the academic year. As pupils explored in their preparatory assemblies, the International Day of Peace falls during September, but this is only a part of our rationale. We consider it of crucial importance to begin the year by reminding ourselves that we are called to be peacemakers, in line with our gospel values, as we recognise the potential of the young people in our care to help shape the communities and society of the future: our pupils can themselves be changemakers.

This year’s festival, as always, had a special theme, and this year we explored peace through the principles of Catholic Social Teaching: the dignity of every person, solidarity, the common good, the option for the poor, peace, care for creation and the dignity of work. The exhibition also drew upon the Holy Father’s striking reminder that “Everyone has their part to play in the mosaic of peace.” There could hardly be a more fitting message with which to begin a school year!

Once again, our Main Hall was transformed into an extraordinarily colourful celebration of the cultures, identities and experiences within our school community. We are a truly international school, with over 76 home languages spoken, and pupils themselves curated the cultural stalls, filling them with artefacts, books, displays, food and objects representing their backgrounds. Many wore cultural dress and spoke to our guests with tremendous confidence and pride about identity, belonging, connection and hope.

This is, I think, one of the most beautiful aspects of the Festival. It celebrates difference without allowing difference to divide us. Our pupils are proud of the cultures, languages and traditions which make them who they are, while being equally proud of what they share: their place within our school, their identity as young people growing up and being educated in Wales and the Catholic values which underpin our life together. It is cynefin in its fullest sense: belonging.

Our Mission Statement, taken from John 10:10, calls us to enable our pupils to “have life, and have it to the full”. The Festival provides a wonderful illustration of what that means in practice. Flourishing is not about becoming identical. It is about recognising the God-given dignity and individuality of every person while understanding our responsibility towards one another.

As always, the academic departments approached the Festival theme through their own disciplines, producing some wonderfully thoughtful and imaginative work. The RE Department created its Peace Bells project, inviting pupils to write messages, prayers and personal commitments to peace. Science produced a dove soaring above the exhibition, which carried DNA helixes from its wings, reflecting both our shared humanity and our belief that each of us is made in the image and likeness of God. The working lighthouse reminded us of our call as followers of Christ to be beacons of His light to others. The Periodic Table of Peace ingeniously connected the symbols of scientific elements with words, people and ideas associated with creating peace, while the Art Department produced a magnificent oak tree symbolising the principles of Catholic Social Teaching. Its roots, trunk, branches, acorns and leaves represented dignity, community, justice, solidarity, belonging and our responsibility to care for creation, with pupils from across the age range contributing to its creation.  

We were delighted to welcome many visitors, including Archbishop Mark O’Toole, who spent time meeting and talking with pupils during the celebration. Our Sixth Form Leadership Team guided guests around the exhibition before everyone gathered for a short programme from our Schola Cantorum. Their music was itself chosen to reflect the theme, with items representing solidarity and the beauty which can result when difference is brought together in harmony.

One of the greatest pleasures of occasions such as this is listening to our pupils speaking to visitors. Again and again, guests remarked upon their confidence, warmth, knowledge and obvious pride in their school. Comments left in our Visitors’ Book described the Festival as “inspirational”, “unifying” and “uplifting”, while Archbishop Mark most kindly thanked our pupils for their “wonderful work” and reiterated that we all have a part to play in the mosaic of peace. Our Deputy Director of Education, David Thomas, described the event as “just fantastic”, while our Chair of Governors and Swansea’s Cabinet Member for Education similarly praised the unity, diversity and inspiration represented by the day.

One of our favourite inscriptions in the Visitors’ Book came from one of our own pupils:

“I love the festival and our school! Thank you for doing this for all of us.” Comments such as this really do make the festival one of the most rewarding experiences of our school year.

The same week (a very busy one!) also saw us welcoming younger pupils and their families through our transition programme and Years 5 and 6 Open Evening, another important feature of September at Bishop Vaughan. Our transition work spans the academic year, providing a wide range of opportunities for pupils before and after their move to secondary school, and we’re enormously grateful to colleagues in our Catholic cluster schools for the strength of this partnership.

Looking back over September, then, it seems appropriate that the month began with staff considering our shared purpose, given that the remainder of the month has been similarly characterised strongly by that same ideas of unity and belonging. Sixty years after Bishop Vaughan first opened its doors in 1966, then, that sense of community remains at the heart of the school. During this Jubilee year, we will certainly look backwards with gratitude, celebrating the people and events which have shaped our history and made the school all that it is. This will be reflected in the special Jubilee publication and archive we are producing and it will be commemorated in our Sixtieth Jubilee Mass, to which we look forward later this term. But a Jubilee is not only a celebration of what has gone before; it should also encourage us to think about what we carry forward.

Our young people gave us a compelling answer to that question this September. We carry forward a belief in the dignity of every human person. We carry forward faith and hope, as well as the conviction that difference can enrich rather than divide. We carry forward the responsibility to care for one another, particularly those most in need. Above all, we carry forward the understanding that building a more peaceful and compassionate world is not someone else’s responsibility. Every one of us, as the Holy Father reminded us, has a part to play in bringing this about.

If the enthusiasm, kindness, creativity and sense of purpose demonstrated by our pupils during this first month are any indication, I think we can look forward to a very special year indeed!

Llongyfarchiadau i bawb on such an excellent start to 2026-27. May God bless all of our pupils, families, staff and friends during the year ahead.

Mrs Pole