Bishop Nick’s Introduction to Emmaus

Welcome to this day conference. I am sorry I couldn’t be with you for it but my diary simply wouldn’t permit it. But I am a passionate advocate of what you are going to be hearing today. The problem in our schools is that there are sometime issues with recruitment particularly senior staff in Church schools.

You add to this the fact that for many teachers in what’s the most valuable profession there isn’t a continuity of care given by any professional organisation that looks after them as they are looking at their next step. It is very much left up to them and any advice they get from within the school. And a good recruitment company that takes on the burden of these things seems to me to be filling the gap in the service that our schools offer.

Recruitment is not an amateur issue and the sort of professional recruitment we see in other spheres of industry and business looks very different from what happens to teachers and senior professional in the teaching profession.
So I warmly welcome Emmaus recruitment and the opportunities that this brings. I think it works at different levels. There is a sense in which there is a professionalism being brought to bear that should set the school, the Head teacher, the Chair of Governors, free, having done some initial work on what they are looking for particularly in senior posts but in others as well and then being able to get on with their work while the recruitment company does professional that pastoral and professional recruitment side of the business and I think this is much needed and I know that many Head teachers would agree.

But this is also ecumenical. This isn’t an Anglican thing. We have Church of England Schools, we have Roman Catholic Schools but even if they differ to some extent in ethos and the way they operate the needs for recruitment remain the same or very similar. And therefore this is a professional recruitment facility for different types of Church. And this is surely something to be welcomed in a world in which many people think we are all at loggerheads with each other and in fact we can all work together and support one another.

I have used the word professional several times and I do so without apology because what goes with the word professional and the concept of professionalism is an attention to the detail and an attention to the issue and the process in the round. It’s not just about getting people to apply for jobs it’s looking at them as whole people, their circumstances, their gifts and giving some advice on where they ought to be applying and what is appropriate and how they might develop in the future. And this seems to me to be a very important element for anyone in a profession.

So I am giving my support to this. When this began to be an idea, I met Liam and his colleague and we talked and we prayed together and we looked at different ways of tackling it and how to go from there and that has led to the conference today. I simply want to encourage you to listen carefully and to take seriously the opportunity that is presented here that I’ve not come across before but it seems to me is very opportune and at the right time.

Now, you may be thinking we’re in the middle of a financial crisis. Public money is going to be limited we see evidence of that already. But I want to urge you to look at the real gains, the real value of something like this that may transcend of what looks like an immediate cost. You pay for what you get and you get what you pay for.
I just want to encourage you today to be open to this, to look at the possibilities and I hope you will respond as enthusiastically as I do, to a venture that I support fully.