Julie Rees - Values Based Education

The We Lead Well Podcast

It is one thing for a school to talk about values. It's another for a school to make them a living, breathing part of every aspect of school life in a way that transforms the entire community.

Such is the power of Values-based Education (VbE for short), something that Julie Rees brings to life in the schools she leads and why so many people flock to visit her school to see for themselves. And come away entirely moved by the experience.

Julie is an experienced and successful primary school leader who fully embraced the concept of Values-based education when she first came across it several years ago in her previous school. It totally transformed that school – a small village primary school – and she was then keen to apply such an approach in a more challenging environment, a large market town primary school with many issues relating to rural poverty and deprivation.

And it worked, transforming everything almost overnight.

The process in many ways is quite simple and starts with identifying seven core components to be followed across the school:

• Authentic modelling by adults of positive values
• Developing an 'inner curriculum' of thoughts, feelings and emotions
• Ongoing reflective practice
• The creation of the Values-based Education environment
• Building the Values-based Education curriculum
• Developing quality leadership
• The development of an ethical vocabulary

These components are embedded by taking any of a number of values - from honesty and friendship to trust and responsibility – and exploring them in depth and across the whole school on a month-by-month basis.

In this way they become embedded not only in the school but in every member of the community, making that community all the richer as a result.

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