Character education at WPSA
Our Character Mission Statement
At Warden Park Secondary Academy, we believe that the development of every students’ character is fundamental to our purpose. Our aim is to empower all of our students with the understanding that their character is equally as important to their future happiness and success in life as academic learning and qualifications. To this end, we aim to help each student develop their character and to set them on a lifetime journey of character development.
Curriculum Intent
“Through our curriculum we aim to ‘personally empower’ students by developing in them the ability to act in pursuit of positive personal fulfilment”.
Our approach is underpinned by a belief that:
Strong academic outcomes provide students with the foundation to excel in the next and future stages of their learning.
Highly developed character attributes provide students with the means to develop positive emotions, engage meaningfully, build and sustain positive relationships, find purpose and meaning in their lives and feel a sense of accomplishment.
What is character Education?
Character education is the process by which students strengthen a set of traits and learn how to use these effectively to achieve greater well-being. The acquisition of traits such as kindness, curiosity, self-control, growth mindset, grit, courage, and gratitude help students to be successful at school, both academically and socially, but also prepare them for their personal, family and work lives beyond their school years.
In its simplest terms, character education is about equipping young people with a 'back pack of skills and attributes' that they can use in different situations in their lives. For example, coping with setbacks might require their 'resilience tools' and 'positivity tools'.
Why is character education important?
If young people are able to develop a strong character, they will be able to thrive in any environment that they find themselves in ; for us, this is the most important aspect of education. Indeed, the choice of environments and opportunities that will be open to them will be vast. Outside of developing a secure sense of self and the widening of ones own opportunities, character education enables students to understand, care about and act on core ethical values such as respect, justice, civic virtue and citizenship, and responsibility for self and others. It is upon such core values that we form 'the attitudes and actions that are the hallmark of safe, healthy and informed communities that serve as the foundation of our society.' (US Department for Education).
Our priority virtues:
We have surveyed parents, students and staff in relation to our character developments. Part of this was to explore whether there were particular character virtues seen as a priority for our young people to develop. The feedback we received was the same from each of parents/carers, students and staff and it identified the below five virtues as being essential for young people to develop.
To help reinforce these five virtues we have made some changes to our rewards structure. From after half term teachers will be able to award a Star Student for each of the five virtues when they see a student really demonstrating the virtue. Feedback from our survey of students indicated that they didn’t always know why they had received a Star Student, but thought it very important to actually know. Hopefully this change will help with this whilst strongly promoting the five virtues.
We are also making a change to the criteria for the awarding of Community points which are given by teachers each lesson. From after half term these will be awarded based on students demonstrating the five virtues, as appropriate to the lesson setting.
‘Research literature shows a clear and positive correlation between character education and academic attainment’ . Arthur and O’Shaugnessy, 2012
