(Chris Ince, Gordonstoun, Aiglon European Regional Meeting 2013)
Reflecting on 10 Years of Round Square Membership
After an initial application and enquiry about membership in 2012, Rockport School was accepted into the Round Square global network of schools in 2013 as a European Regional School. By October 2016, with plans for a new Sixth Form underway, Rockport had achieved Global Membership status, with the announcement taking place at RSIC 2016 Louisenlund, Germany.
The application process involved a visit to Rockport by Mark Eagers, the Headmaster at that time of Boxhill School in Surrey, along with Anne West, an experienced retired head teacher and Round Square innovator during her time at Cobham Hall in Kent. Both Boxhill and Cobham are founding member schools within the Round Square network. In 2013 this visit was designed to familiarise the Round Square team with Rockport’s ethos and check if we were a suitable ‘fit’ for entry to the organisation. It was a resounding success as our staff and more importantly our oldest pupils, who at this stage were Year 11 & 12, stepped up and presented their views to the visitors about why their school, Rockport, has always invested in and valued character and values-based education.
By the end of the day the visiting Round Square guests all had decided that little needed to change in our school, as Rockport School was already fulfilling Kurt Hahn’s vision for the epistemic purpose of education. Our OR database and Wikipedia Alumni list demonstrates the diversity of both talent and achievement that has flourished as a result of a Rockport education since 1906.
In 2013 the pupils proudly and confidently discussed the value that the school community placed on co-curricular experiences, sport and overseas faculty tours, declamations, drama productions, Maths Olympiads, planetarium visits, Thanksgiving Dinners, International Clubs, Boarding adventures, debating, eco clubs and tree planting days, Duke of Edinburgh, hill walking, summer concerts, music lessons, adventure training in Fermanagh, paddle boarding and sailing, service drives, BBC Blast workshops, trips to Edinburgh alongside Go Outside and specialist weeks for younger pupils and a myriad of other experiences too numerous to mention.
Rockport pupils are encouraged and indeed expected to be involved in all activities outside of the classroom. As a school, Rockport leaves nobody behind. Later in the same year our place in the global network was secured as Mr Vance successfully navigated a panel interview/interrogation at Aiglon School in Switzerland (the panel being all the other European Heads of School who voted Rockport in!).
This year we have spent time reflecting on 10 years of Round Square membership and considering the additional benefits that being part of the global network for the past 10 years has delivered to the school. It was useful to pause and recall the wealth of extra opportunities that Round Square has afforded to Rockport pupils and staff.
Staff have been involved in the development of the Round Square Discovery Framework which we then, over a number of years, implemented within school across several subject areas. It is a framework which helps us explain the benefits of character education and experiential learning to new staff, parents and pupils who may be unfamiliar with embedded character education. The Discovery Framework is flexible and globally transferrable into national curricula, it is values-based, derived from Aristotelian ethics, and reflects international perspectives and collaboration from more than 200 global schools.
We have, additional to annual school tours, been able to facilitate conference attendance for senior pupils to Jordan, Singapore, Germany, South Africa, Montreal, Oxford, Kenya and in September 2024 Colombia. Pre-conference visits to Rockport from schools in India, Australia, and Denmark, alongside e-pen pals in Ermitage in France and Ashbury in Canada, have also taken place. We have, pre-Covid, hosted in Boarding a number of Round Square exchanges.
In 2019 we hosted a Round Square Globally Accessible Conference designed for ages 13-15 years alongside welcoming King Constantine and the Global Board to Northern Ireland as they held their AGM at Rockport. Rockport specifically planned the age group to provide all Round Square Schools who attended, a returning delegation of pupils who would expand the interest and participation in Round Square throughout their school populations, helping to grow and develop the Round Square ethos in a sustainable manner.
With 32 school delegations aged 13-15 years plus their staff, an army of enthusiastic Rockport parent volunteers, willing Rockport staff, and service and leadership-focused pupils, we filled 6 coaches, the Rockport grounds, and The Europa Hotel to host a high calibre conference experience over 5 days. It was an event that unified our school community and celebrated Rockport and Rockport’s journey with Round Square over the 6-year period.
In January 2020 Mrs Athanasiou and I presented to our Round Square European colleagues at Cobham Hall, sharing our conference planning experience and also how we managed and delivered the RSDF and IDEALS across all areas of the school from Early Years through to our new and growing Sixth Form.
Round Square at junior school level has always been evident with Early Years enjoying specialist weeks and Upper Juniors enjoying hill walking, declamations and taking every opportunity to be engaged in service and adventurous learning and leadership. It was exciting for both Mrs Athanasiou and me to hear of Round Square’s latest innovation. In line with the Discovery Framework, which is designed for whole school use, the Heroes of Discovery were unveiled. The characters have been developed as a specialised age-appropriate package, designed to aid the promotion of and further embedding of character education at junior school level.
We were introduced to Sustainability Suki and Teamwork Tamu in January 2020 and returned to Rockport to share the news. Then just a few weeks later in March 2020, normal operations in schools worldwide were halted whilst schools had to rapidly alter course and be agile to meet the needs of our now online learners. As a result, the Heroes of Discovery launch was delayed.
With the ending of online lessons and the welcome return to pupils actually being physically present in schools, there was no greater time than the aftermath of the pandemic when pupil wellbeing was at a low ebb, to embrace the Heroes of Discovery programme. This would help our youngest learners benefit more fully from and recognise through the Heroes the positive contribution of character education on their lifelong learning journey.
Rockport signed up as a pilot school, Mr Clayton attended training in March 2023 and the PTA sponsored further Heroes’ training for Mrs Athanasiou in March 2024, to familiarise them with the flexibility and potential application of the Heroes characters to extend the Round Square ethos that already exists within Early Years and Upper Juniors. I set about introducing the character names to staff, parents and pupils throughout the school, the single aim since the soft launch in June 2023 at Speech Day was to ensure that the characters were introduced and known during this academic year.
Staff have already embraced the character names and are successfully aligning them with pupil activities and actions to help the pupils make real connections with the language of the discoveries. Mr Wedick is reporting weekly heroes of the week to R5 parents through GCR, Mr Clayton is leading outstanding JDS productions with several Tenacious Tinos and Courageous Collette taking to the stage, whilst Mrs McGovern is leading the way with planned hillwalking sessions and integration of Heroes into art sessions.
The Heroes have featured in weekly newsletters and assemblies. Mrs Williamson in R2 welcomed Aiden Knowles (Sixth Form) to introduce Communication Cara to the R2 pupils as part of a trial where Sixth Formers volunteer their time to develop Round Square throughout the school. Other Early Years staff have piloted lessons and provided feedback, and the PTA have kindly ring-fenced some funds for staff to ensure that the Hero characters are visually present in classroom spaces and therefore in the forefront of our pupils’ minds as they are learning.
In 2021 Mr Vance was nominated and subsequently elected to represent European Heads of School on the Round Square Global Board, we are proud that we are represented at this level. As the only Round Square school on the island of Ireland and one of the smallest school populations in the network, as a school we have achieved a great deal during our 10-year membership of the Round Square network. As our year of reflection comes to an end, we look forward to what the next 10 years of Round Square membership will bring.
‘There is more to us than we know, if we can be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.’ Kurt Hahn
D Toland
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