Washington Academy is committed to equipping students with the skills needed to be active citizens of the 21st Century. Therefore, we promote and reinforce British Values to all our students through our curriculum and the wider aspects of student life.

Individual Liberty

Students are encouraged to be creative thinkers, intellectual risk-takers, and choice-makers who understand the rights and responsibilities that encompass their time in our safe and supportive environment.

Our Personal Development Curriculum underpins the development of 21st-century citizens within our Academy, and the curriculum and wider enrichment programme we offer provides students with the freedom to make choices that allow them to develop and flourish under our care and guidance.

Democracy

Student leadership, and the right to a voice, form a key part of the development of our Academy. Both our Academy values and rewards system were developed through our student voice process, and student voice forms a key role in the development of each faculty, as well as the quality of teaching and learning. Aspects of democracy also appear throughout the curriculum and our assembly programme, highlighting the value of a voice within society and the responsibility that comes with that right. Student Ambassadors help to develop key aspects of the academy through the democratic process and debate that prompts collaboration and collective responsibility.

Mutual Respect

Our assemblies and curriculum show how discrimination and unfairness have a corrosive impact that diminishes us all and through modelling respect we support and elevate each other to achieve.

The principle ‘other people matter’ is a regularly occurring strand of the assembly programme, and is recognised and celebrated through Governors Commendation Awards.

The Rule of Law

The nature of the governance of communities, in the Academy and beyond, in terms of how it protects us and what it expects of us, is an important part of life at the Academy. Our ‘choices and consequences’ system, and the reinforcement of the values that it upholds, help to develop an understanding of the rights and responsibilities that we should not take for granted.

The Personal Development Curriculum includes a range of content that reinforces the rule of law, whether it relates to sexual and emotional development, drugs education, or the political framework of Great Britain.

Tolerance

Opportunities to share and discuss the myriad aspects of British diversity form a key part of our curriculum. We develop an understanding of our cultural heritage through our History and Geography curriculum, we use literature that reinforces the value of diversity in our English curriculum and the Spiritual, Moral, Social, and Cultural development of our students is the bedrock of our Personal Development Curriculum and assembly programme.