CHARACTER EDUCATION
VotesforSchools gives every pupil regular opportunities to listen, question, speak up, consider different perspectives and decide where they stand on real-life issues.
Through weekly VoteTopics, pupils practise the behaviours and attitudes that shape character, while schools build a consistent approach to Personal Development.
Character education can be difficult to pin down because qualities like confidence, resilience and respect aren't developed through one lesson.
They develop through practice.
Every week, a VoteTopic gives pupils another opportunity to listen carefully, explain what they think, encounter a different perspective and reflect on their own views. Over time, those small, repeated experiences become part of how pupils participate in school and the wider world.
The Character Education guidance highlights this consistent engagement as a way VotesforSchools can support qualities including resilience, self-confidence, self-awareness and a strong moral compass.
One week, pupils might be considering misinformation or misogyny. Another, they could be discussing exam stress, knife crime, global conflict or child poverty.
These conversations ask pupils to encounter different views, question information and work out where they stand.
Sometimes that means becoming more confident in their own opinion. Sometimes it means recognising that someone else's perspective has changed their mind.
Both are part of developing character.