At The Hayfield School, education is about more than examination results. Academic success matters enormously to us, but so too does the development of young people who are confident, thoughtful, respectful and ready to take their place in the world. We want our students to leave Hayfield with excellent qualifications, but also with the knowledge, character, values and confidence to live well, work well and contribute well.
Our approach to Personal Development is brought together through Character & Culture.
Character & Culture helps our students to understand themselves, understand others and better understand the world around them. It provides opportunities to explore important questions, encounter different perspectives, develop their own values and learn how to make informed and responsible decisions.
It is not an addition to a Hayfield education. It is an important part of what a Hayfield education means.
Our Leader of Character & Culture is Mr J Coupland.
Growing up presents young people with extraordinary opportunities, but also increasingly complex choices.
Through Character & Culture, we want students to develop the knowledge and confidence they need to navigate those choices successfully. This includes understanding healthy relationships, looking after their physical and emotional wellbeing, managing risk, understanding money, preparing for employment and adult life, appreciating difference, understanding their rights and responsibilities and learning how they can contribute positively to their communities.
Alongside this knowledge, we want to develop something deeper.
We want students to become increasingly self-aware, resilient and responsible. We want them to communicate confidently while listening respectfully. We want them to be able to disagree without being disagreeable, challenge prejudice, recognise risk, make sound judgements and understand that their choices have consequences for themselves and for others.
Ultimately, Character & Culture is about helping young people become good people as well as successful people.
Character & Culture includes our taught programme of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE) and Relationships and Sex Education (RSE), but our approach to Personal Development extends beyond the classroom.
Students encounter Character & Culture through
Together, these experiences allow important themes to be explored in greater depth and revisited as students grow and mature.
One distinctive feature of our approach is the Hayfield Character & Culture Calendar.
Throughout the year, it draws attention to significant people, events, anniversaries and moments that we believe are worthy of celebration, commemoration, reflection or greater awareness.
The Calendar gives us opportunities to look beyond our immediate community and engage students with the richness and complexity of the wider world. It helps stimulate conversation, broaden horizons and ensure that important stories, experiences and perspectives have a place within school life.
Rather than Personal Development being confined to a particular lesson at a particular time, the Calendar helps Character & Culture remain visible and relevant throughout the school year.
Our taught curriculum is carefully planned to help students build the knowledge, understanding and confidence they need as they move through adolescence and towards adulthood.
At Key Stage 3, our objectives include helping students to:
Students encounter a range of age-appropriate themes across the programme, with important ideas revisited and developed as their understanding and maturity grow.
Our Character & Culture Learning Journey provides a more detailed overview of the statutory content and when it is taught.
Relationships and Sex Education forms an important part of our Character & Culture curriculum.
Our aim is to provide students with accurate, age-appropriate knowledge that helps them understand healthy and respectful relationships, recognise inappropriate or unsafe behaviour and make informed decisions as they grow older.
We recognise the important role that parents and carers play in this aspect of a young person’s development. We therefore provide information about our curriculum and opportunities for parents and carers to understand and engage with our approach.
Character & Culture also helps students develop their understanding of the society in which they live.
Students encounter questions around citizenship, diversity, equality, rights and responsibilities and have opportunities to consider perspectives and experiences that may be different from their own.
We want young people to develop their own views, but also to understand that living successfully alongside others requires respect, curiosity, empathy and a willingness to listen.
This contributes to our wider ambition that students leave Hayfield ready not simply to participate in society, but to make a positive contribution to it.
Character & Culture is not a formally examined subject, but that does not mean that learning is left to chance.
We want to know that students are developing secure understanding of the important knowledge they encounter. Periodic assessments, including through Google Forms, help us check what students know and understand.
Discussion, questioning, reflection and students’ contributions also provide opportunities for teachers to explore understanding and identify where important ideas may need to be revisited or clarified.
The purpose is not to attach a grade to a young person’s character. It is to ensure that the curriculum we provide is understood, remembered and useful.
Parents and carers remain the most important influence in many aspects of a young person’s personal development.
We therefore see Character & Culture as an area in which school and families should work in partnership. We will communicate about important aspects of the curriculum, provide opportunities for consultation where appropriate and make information available so that families understand what students are learning.
Open and respectful dialogue helps ensure that young people receive the knowledge and guidance they need as they prepare for adult life.
There is no examination certificate for being kind. There is no GCSE in resilience, decency or knowing how to treat another person well.
But these things matter.
We want students to leave The Hayfield School ambitious for their futures and proud of what they have achieved. We also want them to have the confidence to speak, the humility to listen, the resilience to recover when things go wrong and the judgement to make good decisions when nobody is telling them what to do.
We want them to understand that they have responsibilities as well as rights, that difference should not be feared, and that the way they treat other people matters.
Character & Culture is one of the ways in which we help prepare them for that future.
Because ultimately, our responsibility is not simply to prepare young people for their next examination.
It is to help prepare them for life.
