Get Involved
21 Propositions
To describe the characteristics of a Compassionate School
1 | Core beliefs
There is a core belief in the school that compassion is the key organising principle in education, promoting the highest, collective values with fidelity to every person’s cultural value. Staff strive to develop a compassionate school community and curriculum that ensures everybody’s well-being. They demonstrate respect, generosity of spirit and understanding and support children and young people to behave in a compassionate manner habitually and independently.
2 | The broader purpose of education
The school is fully aware of the broader purpose of education and the importance of considering what they hope will become of their children and young people when they finally leave school. The school strives to create a moral and ethical community in the hope that their pupils live up to altruistic ideals and values and care for each other and the planet and become champions of peace and justice.
3 | Good schooling lies in moral purpose
It is recognised that the route to good schooling lies in moral purpose: the determination, brought to reality, to ensure that all members of the school community behave in a way that is mindful of each other. A compelling and inclusive moral purpose drives the school forward based on equity, social justice and unshakeable principles to be shared and acted upon by everyone.
4 | A deeply embedded set of strongly held values
There is a deeply embedded set of strongly held values. Leaders articulate and reinforce clear values through their daily interactions with staff and pupils as well as governors, ensuring that basic assumptions and beliefs are shared and that all children and young people receive the best possible education whatever the realities of race, poverty, disability and other social barriers.
5 | Vision and values
The school’s culture and ethos result from the application of its vision and values and manifest themselves in customs, symbols, stories and language. They are successfully expressed through ways that leaders, staff and all members of the school community relate to each other and work together reinforcing expectations and modelling compassion in action.
6 | Deeper thinking
Compassionate schools pay great attention to spiritual, moral, social and cultural education and a deeper thinking about the purpose and development of relationships, values and skills that are at the heart of these aspects of education.
7 | Broad, balanced, creative, and inclusive
Leaders and staff are considerate and dutiful, demonstrating humility and self-control. They act with courage in the best interest of the school community to deliver a broad, balanced, creative, and inclusive education, and to develop a set of ethical and compassionate understandings.
8 | Act with integrity
All staff are selfless and act only in the interests of children and young people so that they may lead useful, happy, and fulfilling lives. They act with integrity and establish a climate of openness taking decisions in a transparent manner.
9 | Safeguarding as part of well-being
Well-being strategies and programmes are developed as part of the overall culture of the school and its values, fully integrated into the life and work of the school. Staff and children’s well-being is the result of a stimulating and inclusive learning environment and meeting personal needs and expectations. The school ensures a strong focus on safeguarding as part of well-being. Peer counsellors, mediators and mentors are used to maintain and rebuild relationships as a form of restorative justice and compassion in action. Compassion is shown at all times to the most vulnerable and needy in the school community.
10 | Monitor carefully indicators of well-being
Leaders monitor carefully indicators of well-being such as staff and pupil attendance, mental health, complaints and grievances, recruitment and retention and engagement and participation in school life. They are open and honest in discussing well-being issues and seek feedback through surveys and working groups.
11 | Sense of belonging
The school recognises that their immediate environment should be considered as an active part of children and young people’s sense of belonging, where they can be confident they will fit in and be safe in their identity. Creating a sense of place, and emotional, rooted attachment to the learning environment is vital to improving learning and well-being for every member of the school community.
12 | Build the best possible relationships
The school builds the best possible relationships, recognising that children, young people and adults all want to be known and seen for who they are. These relationships play out with peers, in social places, corridors and classrooms and are continually reinforced through encounters and expectations. Teachers, children and young people flourish in schools which foster their creativity, resilience and sense of agency. Leaders bring a sense of hope, a sense of possibilities, a belief in everybody and a recognition of the power of place and belonging.
13 | Demonstrate optimistic personal behaviour
Staff demonstrate optimistic personal behaviour and continually strive to build an ethos and climate which nourishes well-being and where everybody can give of their best. They highlight and acknowledge compassionate behaviour.
14 | Develop health literacy
A compassionate school is a healthy school in as much as it promotes and develops health literacy in the young as well as promoting the health and well-being of its entire staff and community recognising that a healthy workforce is more likely to make sure that pupils thrive and succeed.
15 | Leaders empower and encourage pupils
The student voice is strong throughout the school. Leaders empower and encourage pupils to suggest improvements to the school and ways to help them learn better and foster their well-being. They participate fully through School Councils and Student Leadership teams, surveys, feedback and evaluations. Staff leaders make sure that their voice counts in being part of a compassionate school always seeking opportunities for informal discussions.
16 | Potential to achieve
Compassionate schools are places where everyone shares the confidence that comes with success in all its forms and where adults, children and young people are valued and aware of their potential to achieve.
17 | Citizens of the school
Compassion in the school is demonstrated daily through reflective, empathetic, and altruistic behaviours. Kindness and compassionate acts are celebrated and praised. There is a strong focus on fairness, equalities and the respecting of children’s rights in all aspects of school life. Pupils are recognised as citizens of the school in a real sense.
18 | Put immediate concerns and actions into perspective
Compassion infuses and emphasises curriculum content and processes. The curriculum shows children the bigger picture and puts immediate concerns and actions into perspective. For example, children are encouraged to care for their school and local environment within the context of global sustainability. Their relationships within the school setting are used to help them to understand how society can move towards more harmonious existence. The study of subject disciplines sheds light on the way human beings have interacted over time, with successes and failures, steps forward and associated side effects.
19 | Children will be enabled
The school works to embrace the growing maturity of awareness, thinking and action in children. It helps children to recognise that society has decision making structures at every level and society succeeds when we all make a contribution, however small, to the common. The school will encourage appropriate consideration of contentious issues, sometimes questioning accepted behaviours and practices, helping children to identify and articulate injustice and how to work for solutions. Children will be enabled, as they mature, to negotiate, campaign and argue for strongly held beliefs while recognising, understanding and challenging the different beliefs of others.
20 | Awareness and action
The school strives to build awareness and action on the part of all pupils and adults to protect the planet. Sustainability is an overt priority through the working routine of the school and in the planned curriculum experience so that pupils are helped to learn about the way that human advance can also jeopardise the fragile global ecosystem.
21 | A Campaigning school
The school sees a contribution to the good of society as an important element of learning, using competition in balance with outlooks of compassion, community and commonwealth. It is a campaigning school, championing the rights of others, supporting charities and the needs of the planet.