The Value of Inclusivity

By Ros Curtis, Principal | St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School, QLD

Most schools espouse certain values. They shape our expectations of members of the school community, and they represent the deepest beliefs and sentiments to which all members of the community can aspire. Given the influential roles of schools on students over a long period of time, values that help students adopt appropriate behaviours are an important part of their education as citizens of good character.

At St Margaret’s, our core values are the foundation of the nature of the interactions in the school, and they are educative.

St Margaret’s has had a long history of using its values to help communicate our school’s story – its mission, standards, and desired outcomes. Promoting these ideals provides the foundation for building the type of school climate we wish to foster. These values reflect the standards and the ways of thinking informed by the Philosophy of the school’s founders, the Sisters of the Society of the Sacred Advent.

In 2021, we embarked on a substantial community consultation with staff, parents and students to explore our school values and their currency in today’s age. The results of this ‘temperature check’ showed a remarkable alignment of key stakeholders with the current school values and provided a ringing endorsement for them in the school context. However, the value Faith, although still ‘scoring highly’ was overtaken by Inclusivity. In today’s world, being overt in our teaching of inclusivity is more important than ever, but for our school, simply replacing Faith with Inclusivity was not an option until it was decided that all our values sit on the bedrock of our Christian Faith and that the Faith dimension needed to be reflected more in each value’s descriptor rather than being a stand-alone value.

The value of Inclusivity at St Margaret’s for example, is described as follows: ‘A St Margaret’s girl knows that every single person reflects the image of God and deserves to be treated with dignity. She demonstrates inclusivity by acting with compassion and charity, celebrating the gifts of every individual.’

The fact that the value of Inclusivity resonated so strongly with our community comes as no surprise. It’s a value long embraced and practiced by the St Margaret’s community.

As an all-girls school, St Margaret’s is inherently inclusive, focused on the education and empowerment of girls and young women and the provision of unparalleled opportunities for girls. When the Sisters first established the school, they did so to educate and empower young women and that enduring educational vision is as true now as it was in late 1800s. St Margaret’s has remained true to the Sisters’ calling to prepare confident, compassionate, capable young women for further education and for a life making a significant contribution in their global community.

From its inception, St Margaret’s has embraced diversity with the school’s first three enrolments being boarders hailing from rural Australia. Since then, St Margaret’s has continued to embrace a diverse student body and its rich contribution to the fabric of the school.

Today, St Margaret’s welcomes students from both within Australia and overseas. The boarding house is home to girls from the Northern Territory to Northern NSW and everywhere in between as well as China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Soloman Islands and Vanuatu. Each year, a ‘See my difference, See my worth’ festival is held to celebrate the boarding community’s vibrant cultural diversity. Students participate in a program of rich activities including cooking, dance and other cultural experiences.

St Margaret’s is also a partner school of Yalari and is dedicated to creating a brighter future for Indigenous students through a St Margaret’s education.

As a school, we celebrate significant cultural events that celebrate diversity including National Reconciliation Week, NAIDOC Week and Floral Day – a themed free dress day – which sees students dress in floral clothing and our Indigenous students leading the school through traditional dance.

St Margaret’s also has a reputation for its personalised learning and support exemplifying an inclusive approach to valuing student diversity. Meanwhile one of the school’s strategic goals is enriching the St Margaret’s experience, meaning providing a wide range of opportunities inclusive of a wide variety of interests. In 2022, St Margaret’s demonstrated this by including two new sports, AFL and eSports, among its offerings.

With Inclusivity so inherently ingrained in the culture at St Margaret’s, our recent review of the school’s values has allowed us to explicitly define Inclusivity as a core value for our school, our staff, our students and our wider community.

The Anglican faith underpins all that we do at St Margaret’s and is enacted daily by each member of the St Margaret’s community as we interact with each other. This faith is reflected in each of our core values and their importance should not be underestimated as they shape the mindsets and ethical behaviours of our future citizens and leaders.

Images: Main Image - St Margaret’s welcomes students from both within Australia and overseas. Top right - St Margaret’s has introduced inclusivity to its core values. Bottom right - Boarding students learn Japanese cooking at the annual ‘See my differerence, See my worth’ festival.