Mission Statement

“We act justly, love tenderly and recognise God in our lives.”

 

Faith and Love

At Saint Augustine’s, we want our young people to act justly, love tenderly and recognise God in their lives. Working with families, we will educate children in accordance with the principles
and teachings of the Catholic church.

Our faith is nourished through the Eucharist and we want everyone at Saint Augustine’s to experience the
joy of the Gospel in their journey through school and beyond. We will foster in all members of our
community a love of God and a love of others as Jesus taught us.

 

Care and Support

We believe that every person is made and loved by God. This is why we respect each other,
value human dignity and consider the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable.

We want our pupils to be safe, happy and successful at school. We will provide an environment that inspires, encourages and supports their development through nurturing their gifts and talents and will
instil in them the importance of the common good and the stewardship of creation.

 

Ambition and Success

We aim to provide pupils with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that they need to be
successful at school and in later life.

We will work to fulfil the potential of every member of our school by providing an education
that values the whole person and promotes personal and spiritual growth.

Together we will send out our young people to make a difference in our community and in the wider world.

Welcome to our school. Saint Augustine’s is an oversubscribed mixed 11 - 16 Roman Catholic High School with over 1000 pupils on roll. From our original intake of 450 pupils in 1963 we have grown steadily in popularity and are now one of the largest Catholic 11- 16 high schools within Lancashire. Our location is enviable. Surrounded by fields, with Pendle Hill as a backdrop, we enjoy a surprisingly rural setting for a comprehensive school. Billington is a short walk from the ruined twelfth century Cistercian abbey of Whalley, which is one of the most attractive villages in the Ribble Valley.

The school is also a few minutes’ drive away from the market town of Clitheroe, dominated by its little castle, and the Pendle villages associated with the seventeenth century witchcraft trials. Saint Augustine’s has a large catchment area. We have ten partner primaries, four of which are small rural schools. Virtually every child in the Year 6 cohort of our partner primaries moves on up to us. The vast majority of our pupils are bussed in and out of Billington due to the geographical spread of our intake. We draw children from the villages of Dunsop Bridge, Hurst Green, Sabden, Langho, Osbaldeston, Rishton and Great Harwood. A large number travel from Clitheroe, from Padiham (near Burnley) and from the edges of Blackburn.

The school has an excellent track record of strong academic results at GCSE level, with pupils of all abilities achieving outstanding grades and making excellent progress. The main reason we are oversubscribed is because of the high expectations we have of our young people, whatever their abilities. We want to raise these expectations even further.

Headteacher's Message

Since its foundation in 1963, Saint Augustine’s reputation has gone from strength to strength as a caring and forward-looking Catholic school, proud of its outstanding record of academic excellence, pastoral care and rich extra-curricular opportunities available to all its students.

Set in beautiful rural surroundings, our school is a place where children can study, play and develop in safety. Our last Ofsted inspection report judged the school to be outstanding in all aspects of its work, commenting that “students achieve outstandingly well from their starting points” in “a very caring and highly cohesive place of learning and development”. (Ofsted 2013).

Our Section 48 inspection in 2019 undertaken by Salford Diocese also judged the school to be outstanding in all areas commenting that “St Augustine’s is a learning community which provides a living testimony to the vision and strength of the cohesive leadership which is successfully delivering the mission of the Church in education.”

We want our pupils to be safe, happy and successful and measure our own success by the well-qualified, kind, considerate and motivated young people we send out after five years in our care. 

Michael Wright
Executive Headteacher