School’s unique ‘kindness’ Post Box rewards over 500 students in one month! (By Amy, 12, Jill Dando News)

By Amy, 12, Jill Dando News @ Priory

A school’s unique ‘kindness’ Post Box is seeing hundreds of students rewarded for kindness, character traits, achievements and success.

Incredibly, already over 500 postcards have been sent since the start of term.

The latest seven students to benefit from the project at Priory Community School Academy became the ‘Principal’s Students of the Week’.

The brilliant post box located inside Students Services is Britain’s first Kindness Postbox.

It will be 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.

Students have thought up the idea, decorated the postbox and even designed the postcards.

It is all part of the school’s Character Education alongside excellent learning and extra-curricular activities.

This week the latest seven students received their Principal’s Students of the Week for their kindness, character traits, achievements and success.

English teacher Sarah O’ Gorman, Head of Character Education, said: “Good character education can provide ground rules for life for adults and young people, and it stresses the importance of helping children learn and practice behaviors that reflect universal ethical values.

“Character education helps young people become conscious of the right thing to do.”

Mr Markoutsas said: “The Postbox is a brilliant idea. We celebrate all of these excellent character traits every single day.”

Priory is part of The Priory Learning Trust. It has a Jill Dando News Centre where students such as Amy, 12, who wrote this find and write good news stories in Jill’s memory.

The seeds of Jill Dando News were sown at Priory from 2007 with a flurry of good news stories from hundreds of students at the school and messages from Sir Richard Branson.