Consultancy Case Study

How best to build character and resilience in students

The Tony Little Centre, Eton College opened in 2015 and brings together the tradition of Eton College with an outward focus on developments within education.

Although the core mission of schools is to build academic knowledge, it is now widely acknowledged that schools also have a responsibility to develop the character of their pupils.

As from September 2019, the Office of Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OFSTED), will be judging the personal development of ‘learners’ by evaluating the extent to which schools support pupils to develop their character, defined as ‘a set of positive personal traits, dispositions and virtues that informs their motivation and guides their conduct so that they reflect wisely, learn eagerly, behave with integrity and cooperate consistently well with others’.

The purpose of this project is to develop a short character-education programme that can be delivered in school during lessons to pupils in year 9.

What did we deliver?

BrainCanDo has worked in partnership with The Tony Little Centre, Eton College together with a collection of mixed state and independent secondary schools to implement and evaluate a character education programme across one academic year (2019 – 2020)

BrainCanDo will measure the extent to which participation in the programme has had any impact on the self-reported resilience and wellbeing of pupils who have participated.

Outcome

“The leadership team at the Tony Little Centre, Eton College commissioned BrainCanDo to deliver this project but it is the close relationships with the dedicated members of staff within the school together with the support, agility and research rigor of the BrainCanDo team that has made this collaboration so successful.
Alongside the leadership team, BrainCanDo helped to launch the project to provide training for members of staff in all participating schools and made regular visits to schools throughout the project to support delivery of the programme.”

Jonnie Noakes, Head of Teaching & Learning at Eton College and the Director of the Tony Little Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning (CIRL)