Education with Character

At Sedgehill Academy we believe that there is more to a good education than just academic success...

As well as ensuring our students succeed in exams, we aim to develop character, compassion and service.  Throughout their time at Sedgehill Academy, students are expected to contribute to our school community and to society.  We want students to persist in the face of difficulty, try new things, challenge themselves, and to become resilient in overcoming obstacles. 

With this in mind, we provide a breadth of opportunities and experiences which seek to help our students become confident, well-rounded and ambitious young adults.  Our curriculum and enrichment programme is overflowing with opportunities to try something new and develop new skills.  In addition to our very wide range of extracurricular clubs, our students enjoy trips abroad or various residential across the country, university visits, talks by inspirational speakers from the worlds of medicine, law and business as well as countless opportunities to collaborate with their peers at United Learning schools across the country. 

We are incredibly proud to deliver an Education with Character; an education which challenges, inspires and excites our students and prepares them for the ups and downs of life.

What is Character Education? Why is it important?

Although there is no universally accepted definition, character education can be broadly described as an approach to developing a set of values, attitudes, skills and behaviours that are thought to support young people’s development and contribute to their success in school and in adult life. These qualities include respect, leadership, motivation, resilience, self-control, self-confidence, social and emotional skills, and communication skills (Education Endowment Foundation, 2016). 

• Character is educable and its progress can be assessed holistically 
• Character is important: it contributes to human and societal flourishing 
• Good education is good character education
• Character is largely caught through rolemodelling and emotional contagion: school culture and ethos are therefore central
• A school culture that enables students to satisfy their needs for positive relationships, competence, and self-determination facilitates the acquisition of good character
• Character should also be taught: direct teaching of character provides the rationale, language and tools to use in developing character elsewhere in and out of school
• Character should be developed in partnership with parents, employers and other community organisations
• Character education is about fairness and each child has a right to character development
• Positive character development empowers students and is liberating
• Good character demonstrates a readiness to learn from others
• Good character promotes democratic citizenship and autonomous decision making