"Teach children how they should live and they will remember it all their life"

Proverbs 22:6

Aims

We want to grow pupils behaviours and attitudes with pupils that make a highly positive, tangible contribution to the life of the school and the wider community.

We support this through the depth of the pupils' personal development and this project aims to:

• Provide a wide range of opportunities to nurture, develop and stretch pupils’ talents and interests.
• Provide pupils with meaningful opportunities to understand how to be responsible, respectful, active citizens who contribute positively to society.
• Teach pupils know how to discuss and debate issues and ideas in a considered way.

As the project evolves in school we plan to draw in links with other areas, including resources from No Outsiders, to further provide opportuities for children to:

• Promote equality of opportunity and diversity. Giving understanding, appreciation and respect of difference in the world and its people, celebrating the things we share in common across cultural, religious, ethnic and socio-economic communities.
• Engage with views, beliefs and opinions that are different from their own in considered ways.
• Show respect for the different protected characteristics as defined in law and no forms of discrimination are tolerated.

More detail is avaliable in the Values and Learning area of the school website (click the picture below).

Research

Most civic engagement activities within primary schools are discussed within a contributory, personally responsible approach (see below). This approach encourages acts of responsibility in the community, such as giving to charity, and assumes solving social and environmental issues requires personal responsibility.

However, work this year (2023/24) between the Tiptree & Stanway Consortium (TSC) alongside the University of Kent highlights the need for this project to engaging children in civic activities with greater attention being paid to participatory and justice orientated approaches which together prepare children for impactful social action and change.

Additional information from Dr Alison Body (University of Kent) on her reserch project is below: