The term couldn’t have started in a more appropriate manner for our teaching team. Many thanks for making alternative arrangements for your children, on Monday 16 October, which allowed us the privilege of spending the day with Professor Guy Claxton.

Professor Guy Claxton introduced further ideas on how we can cultivate flexible, supple thinking in our students and develop the 'grapple problem' concept; teachers nudging and probing children to grapple with problems that are 'just beyond their reach'. Getting a common message from one of the foremost thinkers on 21st Century learning directly from the source is very powerful and has helped us transform our thinking.

‘Ability and effort are not the only foundations of academic success’

He expressed his amazement that some people still think: "either children try or they don’t try and either they are bright or they are not very bright."

Developing character traits such as perseverance, entrepreneurship and the ability to collaborate, can have a positive impact on academic performance, but too many individuals still believe that IQ determines success,

He said that one of the reluctances to teaching character comes from the "naïve view of education” that says that the only things that matters are ability and effort."

"We can teach people to become more intelligent, to become better at learning, to persevere, to become better collaborators."

There are "many learning strategies and habits which children can develop, which influence their performance quite irrespective of their IQ. Building certain character traits improves young people's ability to flourish at university and onward into life," he said.

This is something that we can practically pay attention to through the way we teach, but doing so doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to knowledge or facts.

There are a whole set of beliefs out there that some people hold very strongly, which stop them thinking about how to develop character.

There are deliberate things we can do to develop students' perseverance.

In the business world and in the sport world, people are completely comfortable with the idea that personality traits such as entrepreneurship or collaboration or initiative, are important things to talk about. It’s only when you get into education that people start to huff and puff and think it’s all some kind of left-wing, child-centred plot.

“Cognitive science is moving very much in this direction – seeing mental capacity as something that is, in itself, educable. We can teach people to become more intelligent, to become better at learning, to persevere, to become better collaborators, to use their imaginations more effectively. The scientific underpinning of that is strong."

The battle isn't over in terms of changing these views.

Athletics

The Year 5 to 8 Athletics day held yesterday at Brookside Park in Rolleston uncovered a wealth of natural talent in our children. Many experienced success in events that they little idea of how the current performance compared to others. For those who have reached the standard to qualify for competing at our Zone finals the choice is to either accept that this is ‘a far’ as they want to go or adopt a growth mindset and strive to reach their real potential through practice.