Head’s Blog: The Perse values – Our DNA in action
DNA literally surrounds The Perse School. 252 Hills Road, which backs onto The Perse playing fields, was the home for 40 years of Double Nobel laureate Fred Sanger. Fred won his first Nobel Prize in 1958 for his development of a method to determine the order of amino acids in proteins, and his second in 1980 for a new technique for the sequencing of nucleic acids in DNA which was key to the Human Genome project.
It wasn’t just our neighbours who pioneered DNA research but our pupils too, with Perse alumnus Ronald Norrish supervising the efforts of Rosalind Franklin, who worked with James Watson and Francis Crick on the structure of DNA.
Biological organisms may be defined by their DNA, but schools are defined by their values. One of the most important episodes in my headship was the mapping of Perse values. I use the word ‘mapping’ deliberately because the Perse values were not imposed by a Head or governors from above, but instead they were an articulation of what was already happening in school. The values were a description of existing Perse behaviours and cultures and were therefore deep-rooted and meaningful before they were captured and depicted in the values symbols and descriptors we use today.
Our values matter because they are authentic and they work because they are simple.
Across the world, schools are heavily regulated and the regulations can manifest themselves in a multiplicity of policies. Once upon a time, Headteachers ran schools with only a clipboard, now they have countless folders of electronic guidance to follow. Sometimes the ensuing policy detail can obscure the bigger picture and the fundamental educational wood can be hidden by the regulatory trees. The strength of the Perse values lies in their simplicity and virtually any school decision can be tested against them. The ‘values test’ is a very good guide to school decision-making and one I use most days.
The first and most important thing to say about our Perse Values of endeavour, intellectual curiosity and scholarship, breadth and balance, and valuing one another and our environment is that they are all equally valuable. We do not have a values hierarchy. All four values are critical to the Perse character and success.
However, values can be interpreted differently, so the purpose of this blog is to give my interpretation of what it means to be ‘Perse’ and how I put Perse values into action.
Endeavour is an old-fashioned word which means to try hard. The link between endeavour and attainment is well-established and recorded in the proverbs of many different languages including my favourite – the importance of ‘elbow grease’.
The correlation between effort and achievement, in schools as in life, is far from strong. Pupils can spend hours on revision but without good exam technique, revision endeavour may not translate into good exam grades. Pupils with specific learning needs such as dyslexia and dyscalculia may find some subjects challenging to master irrespective of the hours dedicated to mastering them. Teachers need to help pupils optimise their endeavours by working smarter not harder.
Expert teachers can help pupils target their efforts to maximise learning gains, for example, by addressing basic conceptual misunderstandings which need to be corrected before significant progress can be made. Teachers can also help with the psychology of endeavour as some students lack the motivation needed to apply themselves fully. In the past such students might have been classified as ‘lazy“, but the real reasons for lack of application are often a lack of confidence, a specific learning need, a wider pastoral problem or a distraction.
Whilst under-endeavour is seen as a barrier to progress, so too is over-endeavour. As the old French proverb says “let the perfect not be the enemy of the good”. In high-achieving schools full of high-achieving pupils with high-achieving parents, there can be a tendency towards excessive application and perfectionism.
Working too hard compromises both attainment and wellbeing. Pupils who stay up late to perfect homework will go into school the next day tired, fractious and less able to concentrate. “All work and no play made Jack a dull boy” and it also meant he lost out on friends and family time, which made him sad and compromised his emotional development. The pupil who spends extra time perfecting exam answers is often the pupil who then runs out of time and doesn’t complete the test. Endeavour matters, but reasonable endeavour matters more, and schools do need to teach pupils about the law of diminishing returns and the art of acceptable corner-cutting.
Intellectual curiosity is a defining feature of the human condition. We like finding things out and the best education stimulates pupils to ask more and more questions, which today can be partially answered by high-quality online search engines. When I was at school the productivity of question answering was limited by the opening hours of the school library, the availability of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and my speed at using it. Today, search engines mean that intellectual curiosity can be turbocharged with questions prompting questions. The ability for pupils to follow intellectual ‘scents’ and interests quickly and easily has never been greater. This allows children to explore links which enhance understanding.
Scholarship is another old-fashioned word, but one that essentially means a toolkit of intellectual skills that once acquired will last a lifetime. Scholarship is the true value of an education because through scholarship, skills learned and practised in school today can still be used half a century later. The skills of scholarship include literacy, numeracy, digital proficiency and the ability to construct and deconstruct arguments, including critical and creative thinking.
Breadth and balance are fundamental to a successful education and a happy life. In schools it is important for children to take part in a wide range of activities so the full spectrum of interpersonal and intrapersonal skills can be acquired. As part of this, empathetic teachers must encourage children out of their comfort zones so that personal development occurs, for example, by giving quiet and shy children opportunities to speak and perform so that new skills are acquired and confidences born. Similarly, more extrovert children need to be encouraged to say less and listen more as these are also essential life skills.
Valuing one another and our environment lie at the heart of The Perse. For teenagers valuing the environment makes perfect sense as in their adult lives they want to be breathing clean air, drinking safe water and be free from climate extremes. In a place like Cambridge, just a few metres above rising sea levels, valuing the environment is an act of both altruism and self-interest.
As the teenage brain gets rewired during adolescence and starts to value peer reactions more than parent and teacher reactions, valuing one another can become challenging, especially when hormones, late nights, digital technology and an increasing tendency for risk-taking behaviour (linked to changes in brain structure and chemistry) all kick in. Teenagers playing to the gallery to impress their peers can get things badly wrong online and in person in ways that compromise valuing one another.
Establishing the importance of being kind, caring, honest and considerate is one of the most important things a school can do. Future happiness, good order, prosperity and security all depend on valuing one another. Being welcoming and inclusive brings people together and brings the best out of them so that individuals and society benefit.
Our values are not rocket science. They are born out of common sense and years of educational practice. In a rapidly changing world, they provide important reference points at individual and institutional levels to guide us on our way.
Ed Elliott
Head