Prestigious 'School of Character' quality mark awarded to academy

By Evie, 11, Jill Dando News @ PCSA

A school has achieved a prestigious accolade for its incredible work on character education.

Priory Community School Academy in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset has successfully achieved the 'School Of Character' Quality Mark by the Association of Character Education.

To win the accolade, students and staff have worked tirelessly on making the school, a place of excellence. For example they invented a ‘kindness’ post box located inside Students Services, used by staff to reward students’ kindness, along with integrity, respect, confidence and aspiration.

Any student who collects all five postcards is sent a celebratory letter from the Principal Angelos Markoutsas.

The Association for Character Education (ACE) visited Priory Community School Academy, alongside a member of Greenshaw Learning Trust, and saw for themselves the great work going on.

Values Ambassadors who had been selected as role models for the school earlier this year, showcased how they felt about the school values and how they flourish with them.

ACE also talked to a variety of staff members and had a tour round the school, hosted by confident Year 10 students.

PCSA received some incredible feedback about their students and staff which proved how much they appreciate values and community: '

The values were a key feature and conversations are geared towards this which keeps the culture alive.’

Some other feedback that was given was that the pastoral tutor programme is of high quality and staff are fully on board and behind it, giving it the attention it deserves.

Equally impressive was the feedback given on student conduct and how they embrace their core values of aspiration, integrity and respect.

'The students were able to articulate the core values and were able to use the vocabulary with confidence'.

Another point they made was that 'the ambassadors were able to talk positively about the time they get to reflect on the values and themselves'.

Citizenship Coordinator, Sarah O'Gorman has championed character education across the school over the past year:

She said: “'I'm so pleased that the collective effort has paid off and we've been recognised for our deeply entrenched values in this school. We have amazing characters at PCSA and our ambassadors, staff and students are all great examples of this.”

The school looks forward to receiving a celebratory plaque which marks their love of values and character education.