To the members of the Ateneo de Manila Junior High School community, welcome to School Year 2025-2026!
Welcome to another exciting year filled with new learning opportunities and meaningful encounters, especially for our dear young men and women of the AJHS – experiences that would hopefully prepare them not just for the next grade level, but ultimately for life.
As always, our plans and directions this school year are anchored in our Vision-Mission as an educational institution.
Our vision is to be the leading Filipino, Catholic, and Jesuit junior high school that holistically cultivates servant-leaders towards excellence for the greater glory of God.
Accompanying this vision, is the AJHS mission, which further concretizes how we, as a school community, seek to nurture our students during their stay in our school:
Inspired by the teachings of St. Ignatius, we nurture young adolescents to discover themselves and become persons-for-others through a well-balanced academic and formation program by:
instilling in them the values of Christ-centeredness, competence, conscience, compassion, and commitment;
equipping them with essential life skills; and
forming them into responsible stewards of creation
so that they may navigate the future with discernment and become a force for good for an inclusive, sustainable, and just society.
Together, our Vision-Mission affirms our identity and way of proceeding as a school. It serves as a testament to the kind of school we hope to become and the kind of students we strive to educate and form. This is further reflected in our school’s strategic priority areas in the next five years, dubbed as AFFIRM:
Academic Curriculum - continually enhancing the curriculum to be at par with global standards
Formation - intensifying Ignatian character among all our stakeholders: students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni
Faculty Development - strengthening faculty development and wellness to further improve teaching and learning
Integral Ecology - championing environmental sustainability initiatives both in and out of campus
Research - cultivating a research culture to improve our program offerings; and
Mutuality with Parents and Alumni - fostering mutual trust and respect with parents and alumni, and increasing collaboration with them in the achievement of school goals
AFFIRM is the AJHS’ unique way of saying “Yes” to the Mission.
Finally, following the core goal of all Jesuit schools and the universal church’s declaration of this year as the Jubilee Year of Hope, our theme for this school year is “Persons-for-Others: Journeying Together towards a Future Full of Hope.”
This theme is really an invitation to every member of the school community to become Co-Pilgrims in Christ – to be truly present to one another, especially those who are in most need, to accompany each other in this shared journey of learning and growth, and together, move towards the hope-filled future promised by Christ himself.
This school year, there will be many opportunities for all of us, especially our dear students, to be true companions and bearers of Christ’s hope to others. I do hope that we will take advantage of these moments, and in the process, be transformed for the better – to the kind of person the Ateneo hopes and desires for us to be, to the kind of person God wants us to be.
Ad majorem Dei gloriam.
May we all have a meaningful and grace-filled school year ahead!