AN43

20 January 2017 An ISI inspection report devotes one of its three main sections to the “quality of pupils’ personal development”. As a symbol of what the independent sector values, it’s quite a powerful one, sitting as it does equally emphasised with “pupil achievements” and “school leadership”. This is particularly striking when one looks at an Ofsted report, where there is no similar ‘personal development’ category. It’s true that it may touch on elements of character development, but it does so only very lightly and the whole structure of the report suggests a much lower priority being given to this crucial element of education. And why do I term it a ‘crucial element of education”? Isn’t it the case that essentially children go to school for pragmatic and utilitarian reasons - to pass exams - and matters of character development aren’t really the business of teachers? And isn’t it the case that independent schools who choose to emphasise their ‘character development’ are those who are a little embarrassed about their academic profile and need to find some justification for the fees they charge? Andreas Schleicher, the OECD official who runs PISA (the organisation that seeks to compare and evaluate education systems across the world) has been pondering in the press the question of what PISA should be measuring by 2030. Speaking to the TES in May he said that one of the questions that needed to be asked was “whether character education should remain in the margins or can we frame our instruction systems much more centrally around these qualities?” A typical accusation levelled at the UK’s independent sector is that its pupils tend to get the top jobs in whatever careers they go into thanks to “the advantages of connections and contacts that place [them] in a privileged position” (Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary of the NUT). Andreas Schleicher presents a different view - and one that independent schools would strongly endorse - namely that the relative success of independent school pupils is not the Old Boys’/Girls’ networks giving them an artificial leg up. Rather, their success comes from the emphasis in these schools on things like leadership, emotional intelligence, having a strong moral compass, resilience, stamina and all those much ‘softer’ skills to do with how to get along with - and motivate - people. Of course, I recognise that this concept is built into the best maintained sector schools as well. Talking about ‘character education’ is not a distraction trick or a defensive response to questions about value for money: it’s actually at the very heart of what an excellent education looks like. Abingdon has very little of its own jargon but we do have one term unique to us I think, in that we refer to our extra-curricular side as “The Other Half”. Like the structure of inspection reports, the names we use can often be statements of what we value. For us the name suggests that we see academic progress as only half of what is important in a pupil’s journey through the school. The “other half” is what pupils get up to outside of the classroom and a key measure of success for us is how good that provision is, in tandem with our pastoral systems, at nurturing the character qualities that will send them out into the world as future leaders in whatever they choose to do. Naturally, I recognise too that some of those qualities I name above are fostered within the academic classroom, but the true assessment of a school spreads much wider than that and goes right to the culture of the place. And it’s that middle section of an ISI report where you want to start and most of the evidence for that section comes from what goes on outside of the classroom. It takes in the clubs, the DoE programme, CCF, cultural activities, magazines and newspapers, debating, the sports, the leadership opportunities, the moral and spiritual awareness of pupils, their sense of culture, of the privileges and responsibilities of being a member of society, their care for others, their instinct to give back and support the weak and disadvantaged, their tolerance and their liberality of spirit. Now, if we can truly place these things at the centre of all our educational provision and cease to confuse ‘education’ with ‘exams’, what a powerful force that could be and what a valuable thing for PISA to be attempting to measure by 2030. Graeme May Deputy Head (Academic) The Importance of Character Education “Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.” R.J. Palacio, Wonder