Westlands CPS use SuperKind to extend their school values into the local community. They are proud to have this work recognised in their recent Ofsted report.
Why did you decide to sign up for the SuperKind Social Impact Schools Award?
Our school’s vision and values are centred on the acronym TEAM; Think, Enjoy, Achieve, Marvel. At Westlands CPS, we strive for our pupils to uphold these values in everything they do, and we found that the SuperKind initiative could provide a platform to extend this into our local community. Highlighting the importance of social action is embedded within our curriculum and assembly themes throughout the year, so signing up for the SuperKind award felt like the natural next step for giving our pupils opportunities to build strong community links.
At Westlands, we believe it is essential to integrate ourselves into the local community and actively participate in making a positive impact. We are dedicated to contributing and making a difference, and the Award helps us embody this commitment. We acknowledge that our pupils are the future, and we find it crucial to empower them to create a better world.
How did you introduce the Award at your school?
We first introduced the award to members of staff in a staff meeting in the Autumn term. Immediately staff were keen to use this with their classes as a way of discussing and encouraging positive social action. Once staff had been guided through how to use the SuperKind platform to award social action badges, we delivered this to the children! SuperKind provided fantastic resources and videos to introduce the award to the children. Separate assemblies were delivered to KS1 and KS2, so that the goal of SuperKind could be conveyed in the most effective way. In our KS2 assembly, children were immediately excited to earn badges and could relate some of their own experiences to those of the ‘Young Change-makers’. KS1 were equally as excited to start earning badges, and talked about the different things they could do to help others or raise awareness. Our assemblies for the Summer Term 2025 are all centred around the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, so we are looking forward to introducing the children to these to see any further social action they can take. Furthermore, a letter was sent home to parents and carers to explain the SuperKind initiative and encouraged them to let the school know if their child/children take any social action outside of school, so this could be rewarded. We also put an ‘Introduction to SuperKind’ page in our weekly newsletter and told parents/carers that any fantastic examples of positive social action that the children take part in will be added to the newsletter each week.
What are some examples of social actions that the Award has led you to take?
Westlands CPS has been very busy taking social action since we introduced the award in the Autumn Term. Many children were keen to earn a badge for creating a poster, and they were able to do this by making important posters to display throughout the school or their classrooms. We had a variety of reasons behind the poster creations such as: being eco-warriors and creating persuasive posters to encourage pupils to not waste water (Year 2), creating a poster to raise awareness for the work UNICEF do and encouraging others to donate a charity run event (Year 3) and even making a poster to raise awareness of the incredible change-maker Greta Thunberg, and the positive social impact she has had on thinking about climate change (Year 5).
In the Spring term, the whole school also took part in charity week. To prepare for this week, we used the SuperKind website to choose our charities and showed the children videos about why donations to their chosen charity would be so valuable. Each class also browsed through the A-Z of fundraising ideas to come up with some creative ways of raising money! The children then worked tirelessly all week to raise awareness, encourage donations and get all staff and pupils involved in their charity event. In total across the school, we raised over £2,800 for our chosen charities! The children felt so proud to have raised this much, and they enjoyed the rewarding feeling of being a positive social change-maker.
At Westlands CPS, we have also had some children go above and beyond at home to raise awareness for charity. A pupil in Year 3 was so amazed by the work UNCIEF do, they decided to earn money by completing extra chores at home and send all that money to the UNICEF charity. The child said, “I already have toys and nice things, but other poor children don’t, I want to help them.” Her parents set up a GoFundMe page so her relaitives and friends could donate too. On the latest update, she had raised over £150! Furthermore, a child in Year 5 had spent months growing out her hair and recently had quite the haircut! With all the hair she had chopped off, she decided to send it to The Little Princess Trust to help children who are affected by hair loss. Due to the impact of SuperKind Award, many of our pupils are looking for ways to make social action and it is incredibly heart-warming to see.
How did the social action that you are doing/your work with SuperKind help with your Ofsted inspection?
We had only recently introduced the SuperKind initiative before our Ofsted inspection, however the impact it already had on our pupils had shone through. Signing up for the SuperKind award helped with our inspection as it supported the inspectors to see how our curriculum has contributed to the development of SMSC in our pupils. Ofsted looked at our ambitious curriculum and praised the variety of opportunities that our pupils are given to take on a range of responsibilities, as well as providing quality personal development. Because our curriculum already provides these opportunities, SuperKind has only allowed our pupils to extend this rich learning from the classroom to the wider community. In their report, Ofsted stated: “Pupils develop their character by taking part in projects such as the ‘super kind’ initiative that encourages pupils to look after their community.” We are very proud of our staff and pupils for embracing the SuperKind initiative and were pleased that our hard work in this area of our curriculum was highlighted by the inspectors.
We are very proud of our staff and pupils for embracing the SuperKind initiative and were pleased that our hard work in this area of our curriculum was highlighted by the inspectors...."
