Stepaside Educate Together N.S is an Educate Together primary school.
The ethos of all Educate Together schools are based on four core principles:
1: Equality
Educate Together schools from the outset respect all ethical and religious traditions. Every family's background and ethical preference is respected and cherished within the school. The school does not teach any particular faith or creed but facilitates any group of parents to organise religious instruction for their children outside the main school programme. However, this does not mean that Educate Together schools avoid issues of ethics and morality.
Educate Together schools have well developed ethical education programmes which teach children core values of appreciation of and respect for social, cultural and other human differences, health and safety, social responsibility and rights and other features necessary to inform a child’s developing mind to live in our rapidly changing society.
2: Child Centered
While covering the curriculum set out by the Department of Education for all national Schools, the educational programme of an Educate Together school is developed creatively through genuine dialogue between teachers and parents for the common good of the children.
3: Co-Educational
All Educate Together schools are co-educational and have active programmes to counter gender stereotyping and inequality in all aspects of school life.
4: Democratically Run
As all Educate Together schools are set up by groups of parents, parents have unparalleled access and involvement in the running and development of the school. The patron body (a structure that is insisted upon by the state) is a charity set up by the parents in the locality which is governed by a constitution, and whose decisions are controlled by general meetings and whose officers are regularly elected. This body allocates its representatives to the Board of Management (the body that handles the day-to-day running of the school) in a democratic fashion that respects parents' wishes. This, in addition to directly elected parents representatives, ensures that parents have a huge influence in school affairs. This unique level of parental involvement can only develop properly if it fully recognises and respects the professional role of the teacher and builds a genuine partnership between the professional and the parent to produce the maximum educational benefit to the children.