Cultural Capital
Cultural Capital at Tewkesbury School
Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, skills, behaviours and experiences that a student can draw upon and which demonstrates their cultural awareness, knowledge and competence. Cultural capital represents the key ingredients that a student will draw upon to be successful in society, their career and the world of work.
Cultural capital gives a student greater influence. It helps them to achieve goals, become successful and rise up the social ladder without necessarily having the wealth or financial capital to do so.
At Tewkesbury School, cultural capital is developed across the whole curriculum through personal, social, physical, spiritual, moral and cultural development. An outline of these can be seen below:
- Personal Development
- An ambitious, knowledge based curriculum which is focused on helping students to remember things in the long term
- Careers Education Information and Guidance, including work experience and careers events
- Employability skills developed across the curriculum including skills for life
- Citizenship and PSHEE provision through the Personal Development curriculum
- The school’s wider pastoral support framework including assemblies, rewards and sanctions, attendance support and the school’s behavioural expectations
- Transition support as children move between years and beyond Y13
- Speaking, listening, writing and the development of oracy through lessons, tutor time, and other events such as Talk the Talk, careers fairs, trips and visits and other extra-curricular opportunities
- Mental health and wellbeing provision through the pastoral team
- Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) through PSHEE and the school nurse
- Safeguarding procedures for all students in our care
- Social Development
- The PSHEE curriculum
- Tutor time and the assembly programme
- Mentoring programmes including Sixth Form mentoring and peer reading schemes
- Charitable work and fundraising
- Student voice, developed through the student parliament
- Provisions linked to the school’s Healthy School’s status
- Anti-Bullying Council and the associated Anti-Bullying Charter
- Physical Development
- The PE curriculum
- Healthy eating through food technology, the school canteen and catering providers
- Health Education through the personal development curriculum
- Extra-curricular activities including sport, Duke of Edinburgh, field trips and other provision after school
- Sports Day and the celebration of sporting achievements through school colours, the school magazine and social media
- The Bike-ability Scheme
- The promotion of walking and cycling to school
- Spiritual Development
- The Ethics/RE curriculum
- The assembly programme
- Support for the expression of individual faiths
- Involvement with the local Churches Team
- Visiting speakers
- Moral Development
- The Ethics/RE curriculum
- The schools behaviour system
- Contribution to local and national charitable projects
- The establishment of a single-use plastics policy in school
- The PSHEE and personal development programme
- Cultural Development
- Citizenship Education
- The art curriculum, including visits to national galleries and local museums
- The music curriculum including peripatetic teaching, orchestra and choir
- Access to modern foreign languages, including trips abroad and student exchanges
- Links to Japanese schools
- The English curriculum and associated theatre visits to support learning
- Author visits to work with groups of students
- Biennial sports tours to Canada, The Caribbean, South Africa etc
- Cultural trips such as those to New York, CERN, WW1 battlefields tour
In addition to whole school provision and development of cultural capital, each curriculum area or faculty, makes its own contribution to students’ cultural capital development. Click the link below for an overview of the contribution of each faculty area.
