The concept of “kindness” has always been very important at our school, but it was only when our current headteacher, Ewan Marshall, arrived in 2021 that we decided to put kindness at the centre of everything we do.
The children had missed so much socialising time during the pandemic that some seemed to have forgotten how to be kind to each other: the basics of considering others and being part of the community.
To tackle this we introduced what we call the “golden threads”, which are, essentially, a list of seven rules that we expect pupils to follow. For example, one thread urges pupils to use kind words, while another urges them to be kind online. Other threads relate to ideas like respecting property and following instructions, which also come back to the concept of kindness.
However, our focus on kindness goes beyond these rules. It’s a value that permeates everything that happens at our school. We teach children to be what we call “upstanders and activists”. This means we encourage them to help when they see someone in trouble, or to take action if they see a child being mean to another child.
Behaviour: Focusing on kindness in school
We teach this through our personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education curriculum, which covers how to be a good friend and how to help someone who is having a bad day. The pupils are really up for it; they embrace the idea that being kind is cool.
The focus on kindness doesn’t just extend to the pupils, though. We also encourage staff to build their classroom practice around this value.
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Our approach to behaviour revolves around positive praise, and noticing when children are doing the right thing. There are rewards for when pupils “choose right”, such as having their name put in the “Golden Book”. Each week, one child who follows the golden thread rules is entered into this book and celebrated in assembly.
But when children “choose wrong”, we don’t ever do things like put their names on a board for poor behaviour. Instead, our focus is on understanding the rationale behind their behaviour.
For example, if one pupil is bullying another, while we would absolutely not tolerate this, the first port of call would not be punishment. Rather, we would start by asking the pupil doing the bullying: “What’s happening with you?”
A happy child doesn’t bully other children, so we want to know what is going on. This allows us to support both the pupil being bullied and the pupil doing the bullying.
Similarly, if a child is being unkind, we will, of course, take action. But rather than applying a traditional sanction, we will do something like send the child to work with a younger year group during lunchtime, to encourage them to be kind to younger children.
We’ve found that this works well, because most pupils like to think of themselves as kind - even those who bully other children.
Encouraging children to be kind is all about exercising the kindness “muscle” - it has to be developed. To help with this, we have a buddy system whereby older children play with younger children, helping them to learn to be kind. This happens during the last hour of school every Friday, with Year 6 pupils going to play with Year 2 buddies, while Year 5 pupils go to play with Year 1.
So, how well is this kindness-based approach working? Well, in a recent discussion about kindness, pupils said some very encouraging things, including,“You have to have a kind heart to follow rules” and “We treat people with kindness and use kind words. It makes them feel better”.
Happy pupils and parents
We feel that the focus on kindness has had a very positive impact on the children. During the past year conflict in the playground has halved. We also recently carried out a survey among parents, which showed that 94 per cent believe their child is happy at school, 96 per cent feel their child is safe and 93 per cent agree that the school ensures their child is well behaved.
We believe those results are driven by our kindness-based approach.
Ultimately, we want our children to do well and fulfil their potential. This is reflected in our school motto, which is to “go further than we thought, run faster than we hoped, teach higher than we dreamed and become the best we can be”.
We feel it is very hard to do all of this in an environment that doesn’t put kindness at its heart. We have zero tolerance of racism, sexual harassment and bullying, and a key part of our vision is to teach pupils to respect, celebrate, include and learn from a diverse range of people, cultures and backgrounds.
Kindness underpins all of this. If you teach children to be kind, they don’t just learn to be their best self - they help others to be their best selves, too.
Emily Gazzard is deputy head of Coldfall Primary School in London. She was speaking to Lynne Wallis
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