Our Christian Ethos

BDAT is a Christian organisation committed to providing high-quality education for all within an ethos which encourages academic, vocational, mental, physical, and spiritual opportunities and development for each member of its academies.

We understand as a Trust we are required to act as Custodian and advocate for the distinctiveness and effectiveness of the church schools within the MAT and understand that the work of the Trust should add value to this. In the last year areas of specific focus have included:

• Hosting and facilitating regular distinctiveness school training for all church schools through our SIAMS PLC ensuring school knowledge and practice is current, cutting edge and shared across our family of schools.
• Providing training for our Chairs of Governors to support local governing bodies to monitor the effectiveness and impact of the schools’ Christian’s vision on the day to day running of the school.
• Practically supporting schools through SIAMs inspections, articulating how the Trust adds value and challenge to the schools’ Christian vision and practice.
• Ensuring statutory compliance with all areas of the Church of England Statement of Entitlement for RE and Collective Worship guidance. Ensuring provision of RE in line with the locally agreed syllabus and the national curriculum requirements for non-church schools.

At BDAT, we live out our vision in partnership with our schools through our shared values. These values are known as ICARE (Inclusion, Compassion, Aspiration, Resilience and Excellence). They provide a common driver and way of working for all of our schools. While the ICARE values can be described as Christian values, at BDAT we believe these values are inclusive and appropriate to all faiths and to those of no faith rather than exclusively Christian. This enables us to work with both Church schools and non-church schools and to support the many diverse and distinct communities we serve across Bradford.

Building from our values each of our individual Academies’ vision is aligned to the BDAT vision but tailored in context to each Academies’ settings. This applies to all our Church schools and non-Church schools and ensures relevance to the unique and special community each of our schools serve.

Please click here to view the Trust SIAMS SEF

BDAT is an Academies Trust operating with the Diocese of Leeds.