The Formatio partnership supports the Catholic Education Service and diocesan schools commissions in implementing strategies for school leadership and governance, as commissioned by the Bishops in 2017.
Its strategic priorities are teacher recruitment, particularly in Religious Education, as well as developing Catholic leadership and the training of multi-academy trust (MAT) staff.
Formatio is made up of four regional hubs comprising partnerships of the dioceses, MATs and the four Catholic universities.
Formatio's South West Regional Hub has identified the need to recruit excellent candidates into Catholic schools both to ensure exceptional Catholic education for children and to grow a rich source of future Catholic leaders.
This led to encouraging and enthusing current students to explore teaching as a career and consider the benefits of working in Catholic schools. The Teaching Internship Programme provides two main resources.
The first is the Be the Difference video, which you can stream to watch at the bottom of this page. It captures the experience of students and staff in three Catholic schools from across the Southwest Partnership.
Pupils from year 3 to year 11 explain what makes their school special and teachers from all phases speak passionately about their experience of teaching in Catholic schools. This includes a four-minute taster version of short soundbites, and a 13-minute version of more in-depth interviews. Both are included in the Year 12 programme but could be used independently for Catholic teacher recruitment purposes.
The second resource is a sample strategy with written resources for schools and colleges to follow together with supporting materials. This resource has been produced in text with few photographs and without any branding, to enable staff to download and add their school’s own templates, stories, images and local context.
These two resources are intended to encourage more candidates into the teaching profession and raise awareness of the benefits of working in the Catholic sector. The target audiences for the video resources range from sixth form students, undergraduates, current teachers in other schools or not currently teaching and parishioners interested in a career in teaching. The written resources are linked to the sample strategy that begins with Year 12 students, although they could be adapted for use with any of those target audiences.
The resources can be downloaded below.