CHARACTER EDUCATION
Our Values
We all have an individual personality that is unique to us. Within that personality, there is a subset of traits, it is these traits that we call ‘character’. We can evaluate our character and we can shape, change and develop our character throughout our lives.
In 2023, The Kingsbrook School was formally recognised by The Association for Character Education with a kitemark for character education. As part of our commitment to the development of character, all students benefit from an hour of character education a week using resources adapted from The Jubilee Centre at The University of Birmingham. In addition, students are provided with significant opportunities to build character via our free and extensive co-curriculum offer that takes place after school everyday. Furthermore, we offer a wide range of enrichment opportunities to all pupils. These include curriculum enrichment days and day trips, to broaden and deepen classroom learning, and residential trips to allow pupils to further develop our school’s core character virtues.
As a school community we strive to follow ‘The Kingsbrook Way’; living our lives informed by a wide set of character virtues, that guide our behaviour and enable us to flourish both in and out of school.
We have four core character virtues: Ambition, Resilience, Confidence and Compassion
AMBITION - The Kingsbrook School has experienced and highly skilled teaching and support staff, all of whom hold extremely high expectations for what students can achieve through effective teaching and support. We benefit from membership of the Insignis Academy Trust, a trust that as the largest Buckinghamshire based, mainstream secondary education, Multi Academy Trust, is highly ambitious for the educational experience of young people locally. Working within the trust allows the sharing of expertise and good practice across the whole staff body, facilitating excellent professional development for all staff.
RESILIENCE - We believe that students should be supported to develop the resilience they will need to cope with the challenges that life may bring. We encourage students to ‘bounce back’ from setbacks and support the social and emotional development of all our students via the Thrive Approach. We are proud to be working with Thrive, an organisation that helps children and young people feel safe, supported and ready to learn. Thrive includes a profiling, action-planning and progress monitoring tool that enables staff to provide specific, tailored support to individual students. It also includes significant training for all our staff focusing on the emotional needs of different age groups, informed by established neuroscience and attachment research.
CONFIDENCE - We aim to instil a sense of confidence in all our students. Students are encouraged to participate in our wide ranging co-curriculum – and almost all do! Activities such as team sports, art, science and nature clubs are free of charge every day for all students to participate in. This along with other enriching events such as hearing external speakers from wide and diverse backgrounds, trips and visits provides significant opportunities for students to develop their confidence.
COMPASSION - A key part of ‘The Kingsbrook Way’ is our commitment to be compassionate to each other as a school community. Expectations are very clear about the way that we interact with each other and the kindness and care we expect students to show for each other. This extends to the compassion we show for our wider environment as ‘Kingsbrook Rangers’, student groups that are taking action to ‘re-wild’ parts of our site following the construction process and work with other partners in supporting wildlife and nature in our wider community. We have already forged links with local schools, organisations and community groups to give our students wider opportunities to work with other young people in the area, and demonstrate and grow their compassion for others.
