Where does ‘character’ come from? Is it something divine – fixed and determined at birth? We all know that character is the product of environment and experience but what impact do our schools have on children’s characters? And do we do enough to shape them?

Children spend 192 days of the year in our schools (52% of the year) and, whilst family clearly influences children’s behavioural development more than anything else (especially when very young), schools do influence children’s characters, whether deliberately or not.

In my experience over the past 20 years in primary education, I have come to believe that character, like most other things, can be taught. Here’s how:

1. Character can be taught.

In my first 10 years as a teacher, I got around a bit. I spent 4 years in a Victorian inner-city school, followed by 3 years as a KS leader in a new school on a new estate, followed by 3 years as a DHT in an affluent village. 

What surprised me the most was the difference in the children’s attitude to learning (and each other) at each of these schools.

At my first, slightly chaotic, inner city school, the children’s learning behaviours were not well developed, but they loved their football team and channeled all their school pride through this.

At the second, new school – which offered vast amounts of extra-curricular opportunities, a clear vision and a ‘masters of the universe’ culture – the children had a cult-like belief in the school (and their own) eventual success.

Then in the village school – which focused on the individual and their ‘special-ness’ – I found many children who were often emotionally fragile and unconcerned with the welfare of their peers.

What also fascinated me was that for each of these schools, there was a school not half a mile down the road with an identical intake which developed children with entirely different attitudes, behaviours and characters.

So when I then became a Headteacher, I reflected that character traits are something which each and every school teaches: either overtly or covertly; consciously  or unconsciously.

In short, how we run our schools, has an impact on the character of our learners.  

2. We change from the outside in.

“We are what we repeatedly do.” This quote from an ancient Greek philosopher, has shaped my school’s approach to teaching character more than anything else.

Doug Lemov, an architect of the ‘Uncommon Schools Network’ in has fantastic book, ‘Teach like a champion’ describes this as ‘changing from the outside in’. The Uncommon Schools network is a group of schools in some of the poorest and most deprived areas of New York. Yet they achieve some of the best outcomes in the county. These schools overtly teach character and assert that most behaviours are learnt (and can therefore be taught).

These quotes point to the simple truth that we as individuals are far more the product  of our environment than our genes. In Matthew Syed’s book ‘Bounce’ he asserts that talent is a myth and that success is the result of opportunity, attitude and practise. The same is true of character. We develop from the ‘outside in’. Our environment shapes us – and as children spend a good deal of time at school, it is clear that we can positively shape children’s attitudes and character from the ‘outside in’ if we choose to make this a priority.

It is something I have been attempting to copy for the past 11 years: by defining what, as a school, we believe to be positive character traits and then overly and consciously teaching these traits until they become embedded.

The outcome? I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I have to speak to my Year 6’s in a whole year about lapses in behaviour. They ‘get it’. Years of character training results in every year being exactly the same in this regard. Over 7 years they have internalised the consistent messages about what we are trying to do as a community and model that for our younger learners.

OFSTED quite liked their behaviour too.

3. It begins with your values.

Having worked in a good many schools, in both teaching and leadership positions, I have come to understand the importance of school values.

At my first, chaotic and often unsuccessful school, the school’s values were just a bit of paper pinned to the wall in the staffroom – never mentioned apart from in the prospectus. Conversely, at the new school on the new estate, they were the beating heart of the school: mentioned in every assembly and interaction.

When I became a Head in 2007 I tried to visit as many outstanding schools as I could. They all had the same thing in common; namely, that they all ‘lived’ their values and used them to build attitudes, and ultimately ‘character’.

If you want to influence children’s behaviours, attitudes and, ultimately, character, then you must first know what behaviours and attitudes that your school is promoting.

So, make the school’s values the starting point for everything you do.

4. Effective Frequency – hammering home the message.

In 1885 Thomas Smith floated the idea of ‘effective Frequency’; in short, a marketing theory which suggested that a costumer had to see or hear an advert 20 times before they would consider buying the product. In 2008, Richard Thaler introduced ‘nudge theory’ which has been used by governments and organisations all over the world to (literally) ‘nudge’ society to make changes to behaviour.

Both these, any many other, theories work on the basic physiological principle that human behaviour is susceptible to suggestion. The more we hear a particular message, the more we internalise it.

So if you want your school’s values to influence children’s attitudes (and ultimately character) then these values must be talked about  constantly.

One assembly on ‘respect’ (for example) simply won’t cut it. Nor will a term’s worth of PSHE lessons in Year 3. And certainly not a pretty poster on the lobby wall which is never referred to. For children to internalise a message then that message has to be everywhere – all the time. At my current school we have talked about ‘respect’ (one of our four values) in at least 10 assemblies a year for the past 7 years – and for the first four years we devoted a whole term’s worth of assemblies to each value.

Short term messages will result in short term impact. If you want to build behaviours, attitudes (and ultimately character) then you need to be in for the long haul.

5. Triangulate the message.

The only way that children internalise a message so that it becomes a habit, which becomes a value, which feeds into their character development, is if it is literally everywhere all the time.

From the obvious and overt 10ft hall banners ‘advertising’ the school’s values (in our case via our band of bespoke super-heroes) to every interaction which every member of staff has with a young person during the day, the overt and covert messages must match.

If we say that we want our young people to show ‘respect for themselves, each other, their school and their communities’ (in our case) then everything that happens in our school has to model this. It is no good having lovely displays about ‘respect’ unless every member of staff aims to model this all of the time, both to the students and each other.

This is where some colleagues mistake control for influence. As Doug Lemov puts it: “Control gets children to do the things you suggest, influence gets them to internalise the things you suggest.” In short, we can ensure compliance without influencing character behaviours (through threats or rewards), but to build character (and therefore develop intrinsic motivation which comes with influence), we need children to ‘believe in their community’s values’.

My current favourite quote (and I do so love a quote) is “The standard which you walk past is the standard you accept”. When it comes to teaching character this is crucial. Whatever character trait you are seeking to instill must be sacrosanct at your school and must be defended at all costs. If you say you value effort, then allowing substandard work is saying that this value is optional. Likewise, if you say you value kindness, and then allow members of staff to bellow at children in corridors you are showing that your words are empty.

To give your words power, they must be a way of life for your school. Only then will they seep into young people’s minds and contribute to their character.

6. Teach character through your curriculum

This is a no brainer, but so many schools say that they ‘simply don’t have the time’ to properly create a curriculum which teaches children the values which they believe contribute to a positive character.

Often schools cite pressures from OFSTED and of the National Curriculum as reasons why they can’t create curricula which provide children with the attributes which they value. However, paragraph 3.2 of the National Curriculum clearly states that it is “just one element in the education of every child. There is time and space in the school day and in each week, term and year to range beyond the national curriculum specifications.” 

At my current school, when we were designing our curriculum 7 years ago, we started from the point of our values and worked backwards. We wanted our children to be brave as, at the time, they would too readily give up when faced with a difficult task. So we therefore had to create opportunities for children to practise bravery.

For the past 7 years every Friday afternoon has been devoted to ‘Enrichment’ – a time in the week where we teach children bravery, leadership, teamwork, and all the other ‘soft skills’ which we know build the characteristics which we want our children to adopt. Children are vertically grouped so that our oldest children model their (now well-developed) behaviours to the youngest. The children can choose from 25 different 6 week ‘course’ including everything from engineering to yoga, bush craft to ‘boomwhacker orchestra’, philosophy to bicycle maintenance.

When OFSTED last visited they were initially suspicious about this use of time. However, after 20 minutes talking to the children about this, the HMI emerged and (with a tear in her eye – no, honestly!) simply said ‘okay… I get it’ – and judged our curriculum ‘Outstanding’.

7. Make failure part of the curriculum

In the noughties, I attended many training courses which said that children should be protected from failure at all costs. In some counties, competitive sports days became taboo. We were told that we should no longer refer to children ‘working’ but only ‘learning’ (as work had negative connotations of ‘graft’ and ‘labour’).  The result was pupils which never experienced failure. 

This may sound wonderful but unfortunately time has shown that this hasn’t served these children well as they became adults. An important character trait is the ability to manage failure.

We therefore need to teach children that failure is part of life and that it is inevitable. But failure should not be mistaken for inability to succeed, only that the conditions for success haven’t yet been met.

Whilst we don’t want to crush children under a brutal ‘win/ lose’ regime, letting a child know that a maths problem is incorrect is okay. Indeed, we must teach our children that most people fail at something the first time that they attempt it (and the second, third, forth, fifth etc). We must teach children that it is what we do in the face of this failure which matters. As Groucho Marx said “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

8. Create safe spaces for failure and effort

In Angela Duckworth’s brilliant book ‘Grit’ she looked at why some high-performing students failed when faced with adversity, whilst others flourished. The answer was surprisingly simple: some pupils had the ability to cope with setbacks whilst others didn’t. 

She went on to look at what these resilient students were doing that their peers were not. Again, the answer was simple. In a study of 1500 schools across the US, Angela’s team found that those students who took part in extra-curricular activities (irrespective of what the activity was) for 3 months or more had a far higher resilience to failure than those who didn’t. The reason? Again, it was simple: these students had been (often unknowingly) practising failure.

When you join a choir, learn to paint, play a new sport etc. no body expects you to be good at it straight away, so there is high challenge, low stress. Children learn that acquiring a new skills is sometimes difficult, but see this as fun as the stakes are low. The study showed that children take these skills of ‘failure management’ and apply them to other, more formal, areas of learning. They know that learning to recorder was hard and took practise, so they expect a new area of maths, or English etc to be the same.

So if we want our children to develop resilience as a character trait, again, we much provide opportunities to practise this through extensive extra-curricular opportunities which we expect all children to get involved in.

9. Don’t confuse behaviour for character.

Children sometimes don’t make good choices. This is because they are children and can’t always regulate their behaviours as an adult would. In every school in the land children will make poor behaviour choices; mostly small – sometimes large. And at every school we will manage that behaviour in a number of ways.

However, we must be extremely careful not to deem a child making poor choices as having a ‘bad character’. Very few educators would disagree with this statement but rather more would perhaps admit, if only to themselves, that – once they have decided that a child is ‘badly behaved’ – they find it very difficult to change that (often subconscious view), which influences nearly every interaction.

Whilst this area is far too complex for my rambling thoughts to deconstruct here, I ask only one question: if you truly believe that we have the power to positively influence character, then do we as leaders and teachers provide the structure, environment and (above all) belief which allows those children who make poor choices (often as a result of complex needs) to become the characters which we know they need and deserve to be?

10. Believe that you can.

I remember sitting in many leadership meetings despairing as to why our children were ‘so passive… so belligerent… so disobedient… such a bad example to the younger children.‘ Until one day they weren’t.

There is no magic wand which can be waved to change the ‘tribal norms’ of a school which directly influences the characteristics displayed by pupils. Whilst quick improvements can be made to behaviour by introducing clarity and energy into the school’s values, underpinned by clear expectations and rewards; long-term change only occurs when children are consistently exposed to the characteristics which we seek to instill: day after day, week after week, year after year, until, on a bright summer’s day in July, our children step out through our doors and we finally reflect on the characters which we have (at least in part) had a hand in creating.

And that is the magic in our job.