Hello

It is widely known that disadvantaged children can face additional challenges in reaching their potential at school and often do not perform as well as other pupils. Evidence indicates that extra funding given to schools specifically for these children, is most effective when spent on:

1) Raising the standard of teaching with activities such as staff professional development.

2) Targeted academic support, such as tutoring.

3) Wider strategies to address non-academic barriers to success, such as attendance, behaviour and social and emotional support.

When planning how to use any funding your school has been given to help this specific cohort of children, ask yourself, how does your chosen strategy reduce students’ barriers to participation and enable young people to feel as if they belong and are valued?

Over the past two years, the Amazing People Schools digital learning platform has helped 1000s of students across the globe to develop life-essential character strengths such as adaptability, courage, empathy, integrity and open-mindedness. This has positively impacted behaviour and emotional wellbeing for those involved, including many hundreds of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

If you’re reading this, you are probably already part of the APS family, and we thank you for your continued support. However, if at any time your school needs further guidance or training on how best to use our platform or help in achieving statutory requirements for social, moral or cultural teachings – we are always happy to help.

 Click here to get in touch.

Amy Johnson was a pilot who paved the way for future female pilots. She became very famous and thrilled the world with record-breaking flights.

Download her profile card here

Emmeline Pankhurst was a key leader of the women’s rights movement in Britain. Despite many setbacks and difficulties, she never gave up her mission and remained committed to achieving gender equality.

Download her profile card here

Eva Perón grew up poor, but through hard work, she rose to become the wife of the president of Argentina. Her political position allowed her to raise awareness of poverty and to encourage equal rights for women and a fairer society.

Download her profile card here

Amazing People Schools’ work around character started with a secondary school in Croydon. We were introduced to the then Deputy Head, Liz Bone, and the Amazing People stories and approach to character really captured her imagination. We worked together to build a story-driven, whole-school approach to character development linked to the school core values which over time had a hugely positive impact upon both staff and students.

“Amazing people was transformative, allowing us a vehicle to close the cultural capital gaps for the young people we served, whilst making character a real, tangible aspiration across the school. People understand people, which is why this programme is so valuable in developing character, particularly with teenagers”.

That piece of work formed the basis of the site and worked because Liz is so passionate about the power of character to positively impact the lives of young people. She wove it across the curriculum and into the language of the school, so it became part of how the school operated – she even overhauled the school rules putting character,especially kindness at its core. It was truly inspirational, and we now have schools working on that same basis around the globe.

Liz Bone is now the head at Weald of Kent Grammar, and we’re absolutely thrilled that the school will be joining the Amazing People Schools network in the new school year. She continues to champion character in all aspects of school life and leads their brilliant school with the character strengths we champion – kindness, empathy, creativity, perseverance – the list goes on. Inspiration and character are truly at the heart of their school community. Their resident therapy dog is even called Ada - after the inspirational Ada Lovelace - just one aspect of the schools’ excellent approach to community and wellbeing. Further updates to follow!

Earlier this week we heard from the brilliant and dedicated team at Ridgewood.

They have been working with Amazing People Schools for a few years now and were updating us on their very successful Tutor Time programme for Years 7 and 8. The students have produced some brilliant, narrated presentations based on Amazing People the students felt most inspired by.

Mrs Haines, who has been running the programme at the school said:

“Amazing People Schools is well resourced, interesting and provides a great starting point for independent and collaborative work. Students voted it for as their favourite activity in form time and have really enjoyed working together to find out more about amazing people. The character strengths that they focussed on this term were perseverance and teamwork. We have really enjoyed delivering this as part of the program - there have been lots of great work across the tutor groups in Y7 and Y8 this year at Ridgewood.”

Did you know that the site features a whole series of Tutor Time resources, amongst many other things?
Try them out for free with your students and let us know what you think!

Have a look below to see what the students had to say: 

Amazing People Schools at ACCSSQ

On 16 and 17 June our Australian team attended the Association of Counsellors in Catholic Schools Queensland (ACCSSQ) on the Gold Coast. Here’s their event round-up:

“It was inspiring to hear psychologists and psychiatrists discussing various mental health trends and providing practical strategies to schools to help support student mental health.

It was a pleasure interacting with 170 delegates who are also passionate about supporting student wellbeing. They also shared an interest in character strengths and commented they liked how Amazing People Schools provided students and teachers with consistent language and vocabulary that they need around their wellbeing. They also loved our interactive Character Chatterboxes.”

Download our chatterboxes here: Primary | Secondary

World Literacy Foundation

Last month, we told you about the great work that the WLF are doing with their Youth Ambassador Program. 

We spoke to Andrew Kay, World Literacy Foundation CEO recently who said: 

"We are incredibly excited to partner with Amazing People Schools to improve our Youth Ambassador Program. APS has provided us with valuable resources to inspire +350 ambassadors and prepare them to become literacy and education advocates!"

Watch out on our social channels this month, as our collaboration continues with some great new initiatives.

Character Matters - Continued Professional Development

We are now taking bookings for September for our new Character Matters – CPD.  
You can read more about it in here.

10 & 11 August

EduTECH at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

The Australian Team can’t wait to meet with over 10,000 educators, leaders, practitioners, decision makers and technology experts across the Education Sector at EduTECH. Drop over and say hi at Stand 412.

If you’d like support in implementing diverse voices across your curriculum, just click here and one of our friendly team will arrange a 1:1 appointment to explain how we can help.

Until next month…

Amazing People Schools

All schools are invited to a free trial of our stories and resources. All we need is your name and school and we will send you login details