Children’s personal development is equally as important as their academic achievement. At The Riverview Academy, we therefore not only develop our children academically but socially, emotionally, culturally, physically and spiritually too, including a focus on their mental health and emotional awareness. All children have an age-appropriate Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education programme of study, taught discretely and through cross-curricular teaching, which explicitly develops character and allows children and young people to flourish. This programme of study also covers Relationships and Health Education so that students can build healthy relationships, enabling informed decisions about their future. It develops children’s understanding of how to impact their community, and how to be an upstanding citizen at all levels: school, local, national and global. As well as ensuring academic success, it is important that we also encourage all of our children to have a greater sense of appreciation and understanding of the wider world around them, as well as developing the life skills that are essential for their next-steps beyond primary school. As we know, adult life requires a range of skills in order for people to flourish, both in the workplace and in their daily lives. These essential life skills are crucial to people achieving their potential, and therefore it is natural that they should also lie at the heart of our education system.
To promote the personal development of every child at The Riverview Academy, we aim to ensure that they are:
- responsible, respectful and active citizens
- developing their personal character so that they can reflect wisely, learn eagerly, behave with integrity and co-operate consistently well with others
- confident and resilient so that they can keep themselves mentally healthy
- clear how to keep physically healthy, eat healthily and maintain an active lifestyle
- aware of healthy relationships
- aware that ‘difference’ is positive, and that individual characteristics make people unique
- ready for the next phase of education, and aware of the employment opportunities for the future
Where did the term ‘cultural capital’ come from?
In the 1970s, Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, developed the idea of cultural capital as a way to explain how power in society was transferred and social classes maintained. Bourdieu believed that cultural capital played an important, and subtle role. For Bourdieu, the more capital you have the more powerful you are.
Bourdieu saw families passing on cultural capital to their children by introducing them to dance and music, taking them to theatres, galleries and historic sites, and by talking about literature and art over the dinner table. More recent work on the idea of cultural capital, by a range of academics, has added technical (marketable skills, e.g. IT) and emotional (empathy and manners) forms as important forms of cultural capital.
The Riverview Academy is committed to ensuring all our children are equipped with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. Our curriculum and provision ensure that all our children acquire the essential knowledge they need to be educated citizens. We ensure that we are introducing them to the best that has been thought and said, and it is our mission to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement. We want all our children to leave Riverview, by the end of KS2, with aspirational goals for their future, without any limitations. We believe that the more cultural capital a child has, the more likely they are to succeed in life and reach their potential.
