The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liam Byrne on 2016-01-20.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to promote character education in schools; and if she will make a statement.
Edward Timpson
All schools should develop character traits like self-confidence, motivation and resilience in their students. These traits support academic attainment, are valued by employers, and encourage young people to make a positive contribution to British society.
At the Character Symposium in January 2016, the Secretary of State for Education outlined her vision for character education. She announced that the Department intends to promote character education through the building and strengthening of our evidence base. We will facilitate this via an online digital platform which will share evidence, innovation, and examples of best practice in character education. We will also promote character education to schools and organisations through a new round of character awards.
To support schools in this, we are already investing £5 million in character education. This figure includes £3.5m of grants for 14 projects and £1m to the Education Endowment Foundation to build research the most effective ways that character can be developed.
Of course, many schools and organisations are already supporting children to develop their character, through programmes such as National Citizen Service. We will be investing over a billion pounds over the next four years to make NCS a rite of passage and toensure that 60% of 16 year olds can take part by 2021.
In addition, school sport can help children and young people develop positive character traits such as fair play, leadership and resilience. It can teach them how to bounce back from defeat, how to respect others and how to work together in teams to achieve a goal. PE remains a compulsory subject at all four key stages in the new national curriculum which came into force in September 2014.