Our Ethos and Values

Every child achieves, belongs and participates, enabling a life of choice and opportunity.

The Castle School Priorities 2025/26

Our mission – Why do we exist?

Our mission is Every Child Achieves, Belongs, and Participates enabling a life of choice and opportunity.

We feel education should empower our students, giving them the knowledge to make sense of the world and grow into citizens who make a difference.

The Houses are essential in fostering the strong family ethos at The Castle School. We very much believe in the partnership between parents and the school. The House system enables us to work with our families; siblings always go into the same House so we get to know families over time.

How do we behave?

Integrity | Humility | Generosity

We work hard on the things that matter, and our mission and values are aligned, knowing the things that matter are the right things.

We are kind to each other, and we show humility.

We are professionally generous enabling others to benefit from our work and keen to collaborate.

Our Values

Achieve - ‘Knowledge enables students to think the unthinkable and the not yet thought’ (Bernstein)

  • High expectations – Outstanding outcomes Plus One

  • Ambitious curriculum and powerful knowledge

  • High quality T&L

  • Determination

  • Perseverance

  • Motivation

  • Resilience

  • Confidence

  • Teamwork

  • Ambition for all

Belong - ‘Belonging is a flame that needs to be continually fed by signals of connection’ (Coyle)

  • Building Character

  • Family

  • Exceptional pastoral care

  • Kindness

  • Integrity

  • Empathy

  • Compassion

  • SEMH

  • Humility

  • Cohesion

 

Participate - ‘Equality of opportunity is the essence of social justice’ (Honore)

  • Enrichment - Universal/Choice/Targeted

  • Sustained participation

  • SMSC/PSHE

  • Personal Development

  • Community awareness

  • Volunteering/ Servitude

  • Neighbourliness

 

Our Priorities

Reading

  • Every Child a Reader – Robust and early identification of reading levels and effective intervention to support students at the early stages of reading. Reading opportunities and disciplinary literacy are built into the curriculum and implemented consistently by colleagues.

 

Attendance and Lost Learning

  • Attendance – Students attend well and can fully engage in their learning.

  • Lost learning – Address lost learning due to all forms of absence.

SEND

  • Adaptive teaching for SEND - Lesson activities and interventions support vulnerable students with additional practice, tailored support and acquiring component knowledge.

What do we do?

We connect with each other, our students and communities by building strong relationships that create a joyful, rigorous, high performing school. 

We are relentless where nothing is left to chance and we promote a culture of no surprises.

As adults we model ‘how we behave’ in every interaction we have.

How do we succeed?

We have strategic anchors focused on:

Curriculum – Our aim is to provide a curriculum that is highly effective in delivering GCSE outcomes and ensures our students will be widely educated

People – Our talent is our most valuable resource

Equity – We believe this is the essence of social justice