Personal Development

At Ark Tindal, we recognise the importance of the influence that a rigorous and inclusive Personal Development curriculum can have on the lives of young people. We strongly believe that not only is it our moral responsibility to develop our pupils beyond the academia, but it is also key to our pupils’ future success and life chances.

The Personal Development curriculum aims to impart skills and knowledge to pupils to enable them to make safe, healthy, and happy choices in life and to shape the next generation of British society with a strong sense of community. An intended by-product of pupils’ increased understanding of relationships, social skills, morality, British Values etc. is better access to the academic curriculum; pupils explicitly learn how to work together, discuss topical issues respectfully, consider the moral implications of dilemmas faced by characters in the stories that they read or the historical figures that they study. Work done on pupils’ Personal Development enhances access to the academic curriculum, increasing the potential bandwidth with which pupils can absorb the knowledge, skills and experiences presented to them in their daily exposure to the academic curriculum.

In order to be happy and live a good life, experience fulfilment, develop morality and build the practical knowledge and wisdom to make the best choices in life, good character must be intentionally developed.

At Tindal, our perspective of character education is driven by an Aristotelean approach whereby individual traits of character, known as virtues, are developed. We believe that character is developed through the teaching and practice of virtue. By teaching our pupils about virtues and providing a platform to practise and develop their use, pupils at Tindal learn to become virtue literate, using their understanding and experience to make meaningful choices. The distinguishing feature of being human is the ability to reason; as educators, we have a moral responsibility to teach our pupils to make the best possible decisions in order for them to reach their full potential.

The school’s approach to character underpins the school vision of inspiring ‘all children to flourish into confident, successful and well-rounded individuals.’ This can only be achieved where staff understand the backdrop of the theory of psychology of moral development. This is reflected in the professional development planned and delivered to staff. By purposely educating staff about moral theory, the increased understanding and engagement in critical thinking around virtue has a much more profound effect on pupils; the influence of this reaches outwards into the wider community.

To further support character development, each class is named after a core virtue. Pupils within the classes will be ambassadors for their named virtue, exploring what it means and looks like in everyday life so that other children in school can learn and develop from this.