Excellence in Pupil Development celebrated at West Craven High School

The award offers a structured framework for schools to evaluate and enrich their pastoral curriculum while supporting students’ personal attributes and attitudes such as self-confidence, resilience and discipline. With a focus on involving local and national organisations, it helps to prepare students for life in modern Britain.

Key to achieving the award is:

• Developing a whole school curriculum where the skills and knowledge for personal development are embedded.
• Setting high expectations for pupil behaviour and conduct, including punctuality and attendance.
• Promoting positive attitudes from students towards their own learning, towards each other, and towards the wider community.
• Engaging with local groups and parents to deliver enrichment activities that develop students’ confidence, responsibility and leadership skills.
• Actively enlisting the support of national and international agencies to help raise students’ aspirations for their future.
• Committing to high-quality, ongoing staff CPD so that all staff can build and support students’ personal development.

Achieving the Excellence in Pupil Development Award follows on from West Craven receiving Optimus Education’s Leading Parent Partnership Award two years ago. This Award celebrates schools who deliver outstanding engagement with all groups of parents.

Assistant Principal, Mrs Robertson led on collating the evidence for both awards. She said: “We are delighted to have been presented with a second Optimus Education Award which celebrates the work we have put in to ensuring that our curriculum is preparing all of our students for life after West Craven High School.”

In his report, Award Verifier, Colin Noble, said: “At West Craven, students are very much viewed and treated as individuals with the school’s curriculum, pastoral care, structure, processes and partnerships consequently shaped by their perceived needs.

“The behaviour of students, both in lessons and in informal time at breaks and lunchtime is a strength of the school. Students were engaged and industrious in lessons and polite, courteous and well-behaved in corridors and at the end of school.

“Another strength is the number of clubs enjoyed by the students at lunchtime and after school, ranging from karaoke, a plethora of sports to chess in the library.

“It was also very impressive to see the extent and depth to which the school is engaging with its local community to promote students’ personal development. Perhaps the most outstanding example of this is the sponsorship of two students by the local Rotary Club to experience the Edinburgh Festival as part of a local theatre group.”