Dominika starts as our opening Alumni with an indepth look at her progression through all of our MAC schools since 2005.

• St Thomas More Catholic First School, 2005 - 2010
• St Bede's Catholic Middle School, 2010 - 2014
• St Augustine’s Catholic High School and Sixth Form, 2014 - 2019

Hi! I’m Dominika, a former Our Lady of Lourdes Multi-Academy Company student (which is now true of my entire school life, as the MAC has recently had the pleasure of including St Thomas More, my first school, among its ranks). My transitions from St Thomas More, to St Bede’s, and finally to St Augustine’s have never felt anything less than natural. In retrospect, the level of communication and support between schools within the MAC is a strikingly central aspect of my memories of school life, in a way I believe is unmatched. There is a unique cohesion between schools, from academic connections among teachers, to the familiarity of codes of conduct and behavioural expectations between schools, to the ever-present value of Catholic life, considered in increasingly dynamic ways alongside the growth of students’ minds.

I’ve found that the MAC is particularly successful in nurturing the interests of students from the very sparks of intrigue. For me, this began with my English teacher at St Thomas More providing additional guidance in areas I was keen to learn more about, and extended into my middle and high school experiences of learning about literature. At later schools, my new teachers were acutely aware of the standards and methods of teaching used at previous levels of education, and thus their understanding of students’ aptitude was not limited to a SAT grade or a few comments; a context lay behind their insight into how we learn. I have no doubt that this affected my academic experiences, though I didn’t realise at the time just how fluid the interconnections between MAC institutions are.

Although my time at St Augustine’s has impacted my future most directly, considering how crucial academic success in A Levels was to the pursuit of higher education, it owes much to St Thomas More and St Bede’s. The flexibility of my A Level English Literature course fulfilled the creative desires formed in first school classrooms, by teachers determined to foster curiosity across an entire academic career. Now that I’m studying Literature at university, I’m well aware that Our Lady of Lourdes MAC has been expertly curated at every level to nurture passion from its roots to a lifelong desire for knowledge, and am deeply grateful for it.