Impact18th December 2024

Personal development helps children flourish at Ark Tindal

In 2024, Ark Tindal in Birmingham received a Quality Mark Plus from the Association for Character Education. Adam Rand, Deputy Headteacher, explains some of the impacts of the approach.

Ark Tindal Primary Academy

When I first joined the school ten years ago, there had been a lot of difficulties with behaviour. To try to stop really poor behaviour, mainly compliance approaches were used. For example, children would walk in silence with their hands behind their backs in the corridors.

“Since becoming an Ark school, and particularly in more recent years, we’ve focused on what it means for a child to flourish and how a strong personal development framework can help us achieve that. We see the academic and personal development curriculums as entirely complementing each other.

“Probably the biggest shift is our focus on the virtues in every aspect of school life. A commitment to virtues is now the ‘how’ for everything we do, having built a strong link between virtues and our vision. This is shown in the curriculums we teach, staff training and appraisals.

“We’re developing an intrinsic motivation to do our best for ourselves and each other, and the behaviour of our pupils. This is improving the quality of every interaction.”