Alison Jones, headmistress of Rye St Antony, looks at the vision of her school’s foundresses and the significance of the faith life of a school community.

Rye St Antony is exceptional as a Catholic independent school for girls in having been founded not by a religious congregation but by lay women. Elizabeth Rendall grew up in China where her parents were Anglican missionaries.

In 1898, at the age of 16, with her younger brother, George, she was sent for safety to England and the care of an uncle in Bristol.

Her parents’ fears were justified: they were killed shortly afterwards in the Boxer Uprising. Elizabeth, meanwhile, was accepted by St Anne’s College Oxford as a home student, the only status available to her at that time.

With the opportunity to study but with nowhere to live and no financial support, Elizabeth took residential employment in a local school, where her teaching skills and her management and leadership skills were quickly recognised and, as it turned out, long appreciated.

In 1930 she then saw the way forward in a new direction, entering the Catholic Church and, with the help of Ivy King, founding in Oxford a Catholic School for Girls, Rye St Antony.

The decision to start the new school was reached during a visit to Rye in Sussex and its church dedicated to St Antony of Padua. It was the parish priest, the renowned Franciscan, Father Bonaventure, whose support at this critical time gave Elizabeth Rendall and Ivy King the name for the school, their commitment to the new enterprise having been made with Father Bonaventure’s encouragement at St Antony’s church in Rye.

From the outset, the school gave a setting in which pupils were encouraged to discover not only the personal, intellectual and social dimensions of life but the moral, spiritual and religious dimensions too.

English was Elizabeth Rendall’s subject. She was an inspiring teacher of language and literature, a published writer herself, and a passionate advocate of the importance of learning to use language with skill and style. She was interested in the grammar of faith, just as the grammar of language, and she was a highly effective teacher of both.

Oxford is an international city, and the international character of the university population is evident also in the school community, boarding and day. English and Catholicism are the school’s common currency, but pupils come from various language and faith backgrounds, so that individuals are able to discover their personal identities within the local, national and international communities to which they belong.

Pupils are helped to understand themselves, their particular strengths and weaknesses, and the ways in which they can play their part in the world around them, faith giving them the vision and the framework of values, and language providing the means of connecting and engaging.

As Rye St Antony celebrates the 80th year of its foundation, it celebrates its work in helping pupils grow in their faith and the wisdom, integrity and resilience that will enable them to embark on the future and make their contribution to the world.