IDEOLOGY

Spanish law recognizes the right to education and freedom of education.

Our Character or Ideology is not limited to moral and religious aspects, but it can extend as limiting virtuality to other aspects of organizational and pedagogical content.

The Augustinian family in Spain presents this IDEOLOGY that is inspired by the motto of St. Augustine ‘LOVE AND SCIENCE’.

We declare ourselves Catholic schools and offer a way to understand Augustinian education, so that those who are interested in it, along with us, can make it a living and operating reality.

We provide this education our style, our OWN CHARACTER to PARENTS, in a special way, and with the utmost respect to their duties and responsibilities to TEACHERS, STUDENTS and NON-ACADEMIC STAFF, and all who work with us.

    - General Principles -  

Our educational offer is developed based on the following principles:

• ‘Child is entitled to receive education, which shall be compulsory and free, least in the fundamental stages, that to promote his general culture and allowed to develop his abilities, his individual judgment and his sense of moral and social responsibility in equal opportunities, and to become a useful member society’

(‘Children's Rights’, 7. UN, 1959)

• ‘Since parents have given life to their children, have the very serious obligation to educate the offspring and, therefore, should recognize them as first and principal educators of your children…It is necessary that they enjoy absolute freedom in the choice of schools’
  

(Declaration ‘Gravissimum Educationis’, 3, 6)

• ‘The right to freedom of education implies the obligation of the Member States make possible the practical exercise of this right, even in the economic aspect, and grant to private centers the public subsidies necessary for the exercise of his mission and the fulfillment of obligations under conditions equal to those who enjoy corresponding public centres, without discrimination with respect to the entities owners, parents, students or teaching staff and services’
  

(Resolution LUSTER on freedom of education, 1984).

• The influence of the Church in the field of education is shown in a special manner by the Catholic school. No less than other schools does the Catholic school pursue cultural goals and the human formation of youth. But its proper function is to create for the school community a special atmosphere animated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity, to help youth grow according to the new creatures they were made through baptism as they develop their own personalities, and finally to order the whole of human culture to the news of salvation so that the knowledge the students gradually acquire of the world, life and man is illumined by faith. 
  

(Declaration ‘Gravissimum Educationis’, 8. Vatican II).

• ‘School is a big family in which dialogue, interaction and behaviour constitute birth elements of the educational process. The goal is not the information- knowledge, but the training-wisdom. Not ideas such as data transmission, but the offer and promotion of ideals as attitudes’                                                                                                 

(St. Augustine)

    - Identity of Augustinian Education School -

The Augustinian Order has a long history of providing education and has developed its activity in diverse social settings. Its spirit and educational style are still alive and in step with today's society and the demands of today’s modern man.

The two dimensions of Augustinian man, in a dialectical relationship of complementarity, are:

Personal: INTERIORITY is the way to SEARCH FOR TRUTH in order to reach the Transcendence.

Community: Values as LOVE-CHARITY- FRATERNITY are embodied progressively.

•   A progressive learning that leads to ever-increasing knowledge of all reality, especially of man and God.  
  

•   A sincere and noble openness to all men in order to build a more fraternal and united society.

The two dimensions of Augustinian man presuppose the following attitudes:

1. People’s capacity for dialogue and mutual acceptance in a free and liberating atmosphere.

2. Willingness to adapt to the times and sensitivity to the others’ problems.
3. Closeness and friendship atmosphere, which promotes respect for the person in his/her particular field and always open to the community.

5. Testimony of one's life as a basis of human and Christian education. 
   

    - Our Objectives -

Education Centre

To achieve the formation of the whole person through the harmonious development of all his/her physical, psychological, sociocultural and transcendent potential.

To develop personal skills, stimulating creativity and scientific research.

To encourage critical thinking versus totalizing options in science or life.

To educate students progressively about the social, cultural and scientific reality, in dialogue with the ways of life, customs and traditions in the society in which they operate.

To create work habits and dynamic spirit to face new situations and participate in the transformation of society.

To encourage personal and liberating education so that our students themselves are responsible for their own education.

Catholic Education School

To provide a human culture open to the message of salvation.

To transmit Christian values for the students to experience faith personally and communally.

To train our students to behave in life, personally and communally, according to evangelical attitudes and criteria.

To impart religious instruction in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

To accompany the life of faith and the progressive experience in the sacramental life within a framework of respect and freedom.

To announce explicitly the Saving Message of Jesus about the Kingdom of God, ensuring that this Kingdom becomes a reality in school.

To encourage all pastoral activity of the School from the Department of Education for faith-based.

Augustinian Education Centre

To educate for learning, reflection and interiority in order to discover the truths and, with the help of grace, to find the truth that is revealed in Christ.

To make the student a free person, responsible and aware of their values ​​and goals, but never detached from the others, as the relationship with the other makes them successful individuals.

To enable students, with our closeness, to feel satisfied and happy in their work, relationships with teachers and peers in all activities of school life.

To Initiate students in the experience of friendship as a process of openness to others and transcendence.

‘The teaching of Science and Science of teaching.  One without the other is unthinkable. In fact no one is taught without learning and no learning without being taught’

    - Agustinian Scholl -

Each group and each person in our school community fulfils his Christian education tasks, indispensable and urgent, acting with unity in what is necessary, freely when the common good is requested and always with love (St. Augustine).

Pedagogical criteria

To stimulate active learning, where students feel and are the protagonists of their own learning process, encouraging their initiative and creativity.

To guide students in their formative work according to the following principles:

1. The real situation of students and their family social environment as a starting point.

2. The possibilities of their growth and maturation.

3. Interest for individual work.

4. The intellectual capacity to give access to knowledge and the world of work. The social dimension of the educational process: teamwork, cooperation, solidarity.

5. A suitable technical services offering for vocational and professional guidance.

To project our education beyond academic activity:

1. Training for leisure, through cultural, sporting and recreational activities.

2. Promotion of groups and associations which provide respond to religious social and cultural concerns.

3. Influence on social and cultural expansion of the environment.

To get students more interested in the current technology as a resource for personal training and the construction of society.

To clearly define an open, flexible and updated teaching methodology in the Educational Project, to ensure our pedagogical principles.

To check and assess the quality of teaching and the ‘adequacy’ of our pedagogy to meet the needs of all students.

Educational Community

The Governing Body, Students, Parents, Teachers and Non-Teaching Staff.

We hope that the educational community becomes an authentic Christian community, characterized by active responsibility for the human formation project according to the Gospel and our Augustinian identity.

We hope that the educational community participates responsibly in the corporate bodies that are set up.

We take care of human relationships among the religious community, family, teachers, students, and staff, as a basic means for the effectiveness of our educational work.

The Governing Body

It sets up the identity of the School and ensures the principles that define the type of education offered and the performance criteria that enable it to be carried.

It promotes an overall educational activity in the school, assumes ultimate responsibility to society and promotes a climate of school participation that enables collaboration and responsibility.

It ensures harmony between the different stakeholders and government bodies, encourage consistency and quality of education in a climate of responsible freedom.

It assumes those rights and duties arising from the contractual relationship with the staff and the administration.

The Students

They are the protagonists of their own education and participate, gradually and responsibly, in the development and growth of the educational community.

They are entitled to that school activity offers them opportunities to grow up and mature in all aspects of his personality.

They sympathized with the ideals, style and the Educational Project and are also involved individually, collectively and associatively in school life according to their ability, assuming their rights and obligations.

Student Parents

They are the first educators of their children and are actively involved in school activities, facilitating and ensuring their integral education.

They help to maintain and update the kind of education they have chosen, and that the school offers.

Our School Parents’ Association promotes, within their competence, participation of parents and focus their efforts on defending the type of school they have chosen.

Teachers

They play an important role in the educational community. They are responsible to promote and encourage in a more direct way:

1. School overall educational activities consistent with the Ideology.

2. Participation through corporate and unipersonal governing body of which they are members.

They collaborate in coordination with other members of the educational community.

They are updated through continuing education to achieve comprehensive education of students.

Non-Teaching Staff

The school structure and operation require the collaboration of other members that are not directly related to teaching.

The administrative and services staff contributes to the smooth running of the educational community and brings collaboration to both the entity and to other school members.

They participate in school corporate bodies and are correspondingly responsible for the overall educational activity.

Our participatory management model

Active, coordinated and co-responsible participation of various individuals and groups that constitute the educational community, which is necessary for achieving the student training.

Participation in the initiative is open to all educators who offer their hopes and energies to the school overall educational work.

Participation governed by consistent criteria with the Ideology and Educational Project, representativeness, co-responsibility and subsidiarity.

1. The areas and levels of participation of each educational community sector are needed in the Internal Regulations.

2. The School Board, at a public funding level, is the intervention department of different sectors of the educational community in the school management.

Our basic management criteria

Competence, availability, consistency and commitment capacity of all its members.

Primacy of the common interests of the educational community.

Student training needs and teaching quality as a priority, that gives meaning to proposals and decisions.

Dialogue, understanding and respect, as ways for interaction.

‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference’ (St. Augustine).

This Ideology or Own Character has been prepared and approved by the SAF (Spanish Augustinian Federation) in the sixteenth anniversary of the Conversion of St. Augustine, 1986.