Julie Penrose | Preparatory Head | Reddam House Helderfontein | mail me |
In education, we often speak about achievement. Understandably, much of that conversation centres on academic progress, attainment and results. These things matter enormously. Yet the longer I work with children, the more convinced I become that achievement depends on the environment in which a child learns.
Before children can flourish academically, certain conditions must be in place around them. They need to feel safe, experience a sense of belonging and know that others recognise them. Perhaps most importantly, they need to feel that their community stands for something meaningful.
Values education – the foundation of learning
This is why I see values education not as an additional layer in schooling, but as something much more fundamental. Values shape the emotional and relational climate in which learning takes place. They influence how children speak to one another, respond when things go wrong, manage differences and disappointment, and understand themselves as contributors to a wider community.
Children in the preparatory years develop rapidly, both socially and emotionally, as well as cognitively. They learn what friendship means, what fairness looks like, how to navigate conflict and how to find their place within a group. As adults, we can easily assume that children understand words such as respect, integrity, responsibility, courage, and kindness as we do. In reality, these are complex ideas that children must explore repeatedly before they become meaningful.
Kindness can develop from simply being nice to somebody into making space for someone who feels excluded. Responsibility can grow into an understanding that our choices have consequences. It also means recognising that belonging to a community requires us to own those choices. Integrity asks children to distinguish between what is easy and what is right. It also requires them to be honest when honesty feels uncomfortable.
These lessons cannot be delivered once in an assembly and then considered complete. Instead, children develop their understanding through experience, conversation and reflection. Very often, they learn through their mistakes.
Turning mistakes into opportunities for growth
This is one area in which my own thinking has shifted most strongly. I no longer believe that values education is primarily about preventing children from making poor choices.
Children will make mistakes; that is part of growing up. The more important question is how we respond to those moments. Do we treat them merely as disciplinary problems, or do we recognise opportunities to deepen a child’s understanding of themselves, others and the community around them?
A disagreement between friends, an unkind comment, dishonesty, exclusion or a lapse in judgement can become an important learning opportunity when adults respond thoughtfully. Accountability remains essential.
Children need boundaries and must understand that their choices have consequences. However, accountability does not have to come at the expense of dignity. We can hold a child firmly responsible while still offering a route back into the community through honesty, reflection, apology, and repair.
For me, this is where kindness and integrity meet. Kindness is not softness. Sometimes, people misunderstand kindness in education, treating it as though caring adults must lower expectations or shield children from the discomfort of accountability. I have never experienced it that way.
Sometimes, the kindest thing we can do for a child is to explain clearly that their choice was unacceptable. At the same time, we must make it equally clear that one mistake does not define them. Integrity requires us to speak truthfully about behaviour, while kindness requires us to respond in ways that leave room for growth.
When children experience this consistency, expectations become more predictable. They also begin to echo the language adults use. Gradually, conversations can move away from questions such as, “Am I going to get into trouble?” towards more reflective questions: “What impact did my choice have?” or “What could I have done differently?
Beyond compliance – building character
This shift matters because values education differs significantly from simple compliance. Our aim cannot be to produce children who behave well only because an adult is watching.
Although that approach may create order, it does not necessarily develop character. The deeper purpose is to help children understand internally why certain choices matter, how their behaviour affects others and what responsibilities come with belonging to a community.
We have become increasingly deliberate about this in our Junior and Senior Preparatory years. We are moving beyond simply naming values towards helping children recognise what those values look like in everyday school life. Assemblies, classroom conversations, student leadership and pastoral discussions all provide opportunities to explore how values translate into practice.
There is something deeply rewarding about watching a child realise that confidence does not mean being the loudest person in the room. Similarly, courage may sometimes mean admitting that they were wrong. A child who quietly demonstrates integrity, or chooses kindness when excluding someone would have been easier, may appear to be part of the ordinary busyness of a school day. Yet these moments often shape the culture of a school.
Kindness is not softness; it can require considerable courage. It means choosing to include someone when exclusion might earn approval from others. It also means treating people with dignity while maintaining clear expectations about their behaviour. When children see kindness practised alongside integrity and accountability, they begin to understand that compassion and high standards can coexist.
The connection between belonging and academic achievement
The connection between values education and learning has also become increasingly clear to me. Children learn best when they do not constantly have to worry about where they stand within their community. When expectations are clear, relationships are secure and children feel that they belong, they have more emotional space for curiosity, persistence and the willingness to attempt something difficult.
A child who fears embarrassment may hesitate to ask a question. Similarly, a child who feels socially unsafe may spend more energy protecting themselves than engaging with the lesson. However, a child who feels genuinely known and supported is more likely to attempt difficult tasks, recover from failure and remain open to feedback.
This is why belonging has become such an important part of my educational philosophy. Children do not flourish simply because they attend a school; they flourish when they experience themselves as part of it. When they understand that their behaviour contributes to the kind of school they attend, their sense of agency grows. They begin to see themselves as active participants in shaping their community.
Of course, values education cannot be something we expect only from children. If we want young people to grow into individuals who demonstrate integrity, kindness, respect, and responsibility, they must see those qualities in the adults around them. Children are extraordinarily perceptive when adults’ actions contradict their words.
Adults must model the values they teach
A school may speak about respect, but children also learn from how adults speak to one another during disagreements. They watch how adults respond when something goes wrong. In this sense, every adult in a school community contributes to the values curriculum, whether they intend to or not.
This does not require perfection. In fact, perfection would be a rather unhelpful model for children. What matters more is coherence between what adults say and what they do. Adults who acknowledge their mistakes, repair relationships and remain open to reflection teach children something enormously important about integrity.
Communities become stronger not because conflict never occurs, but because they develop healthy ways of responding when it does. This is another reason why kindness is not softness. It takes strength to acknowledge wrongdoing, accept responsibility, rebuild trust, and treat others with dignity, even when circumstances become uncomfortable.
Educating children to flourish beyond the classroom
Education will always involve curriculum, assessment, knowledge and skills, and rightly so. We have a responsibility to ensure that children leave school academically equipped for what comes next. Yet we are also educating human beings who will become colleagues, partners, parents, neighbours, leaders and members of communities far beyond our own. The conditions in which they develop into those people matter.
If we create schools where children are known, belonging is cultivated, integrity is expected and kindness is practised with courage, we achieve more than a positive school culture. We establish the conditions that enable children to flourish.
Ultimately, one could argue that this is one of the most important measures of education. We must consider not only what a child has learned by the time they leave us, but also who they have begun to understand themselves to be. Equally important is what they believe they can contribute to the communities they will one day help to shape.