It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to King Charles I, School part of Four Stones Gateway Trust. As a parent of three boys, I am very aware of the hopes and aspirations that parents/carers and students place in education. We all want our children to be happy, confident, and secure so that they can enjoy their formative years. We want them to be supported and challenged in equal measure so that they can go on to on to realise their dreams.

At King Charles I School, we are ambitious and welcoming; we both support and challenge every child to leave our school with strong academic qualifications, a well-developed character, and clear values that will carry them through to long term success. Our values of Ambition, Commitment, Creativity, and Integrity ensure all students are equipped with the skills and mind-set they need in life. Our staff give 100% and in return, we ask our students to also give 100%. This means being ambitious in their thinking, hardworking, and resilient. Excellent pastoral support coupled with determination to succeed means that every student will develop into a well-rounded young person and achieve their best.

We are proud to be part of Four Stones Gateway Trust and as such have high expectations of both our students and staff and respect the traditional values of hard work, good manners, and self-discipline. Learning is at the centre of everything we do. We recognise that learning can be challenging and so we focus on supporting students to become resilient and confident individuals who always try their best and understand that making mistakes is part of the learning process and ultimately helps us to improve.

As a school, we are committed to providing the highest quality educational experience where powerful knowledge sparks curiosity and interest, resulting in academic success for our students and ensuring they go on to secure places at the very best universities and apprenticeships. Our educational offer is not confined to the classroom and as such we pride ourselves on giving every student the opportunity to be the best they can through a diverse range of opportunities, activities and experiences which equips and prepares them with the social and cultural capital needed to compete and be successful.

Our students are enthusiastic, motivated, ambitious to succeed, and capable of very high standards of behaviour and engagement in their studies. We are confident that all of our students will achieve everything that they set their minds to. Therefore, if you are looking for an environment that promotes hard work, success and personal development, King Charles I School is the place for you.

RUTH ALLEN

HEADTEACHER

At King Charles I School, we live and breathe our values – they are embedded into everything we do and are a part of who we are as members of the community at King Charles I School. The King Charles I School community is made up of students, staff, parents/carers and the Governors. We all aim to embody the values of our school as we believe this will make us all successful but most importantly will ensure that our community is a safe and happy place where positive relationships allow you to thrive.

Throughout the year we teach students how to show the school values in all aspects of life, which we believe will help them to become well-rounded individuals who are kind and who have high expectations of themselves. We believe that every student is capable of achieving the very best and that they can be kind to everybody in the community. Our mantra at King Charles I School is that ‘we have high expectations of you because we care about you’; this is why we have a warm/strict approach in our school where we aim to build positive relationships, but we also ask students to take responsibility for their actions. We do these things because we care about students and their futures.

“…we have high expectations

of you because we care about you.”

We are dedicated to improving standards and driven to achieve excellence by living and breathing our core values of:

AMBITION

We are ambitious for ourselves and our students. We set high expectations and standards and strive to achieve excellence in all that we do. We are unashamedly ambitious for the students we serve. We want to provide access to opportunities within the classroom and beyond. We will continue to strive to be the best we can be

COMMITMENT

We are committed to being the best we can be. We consistently deliver on expectations, go the extra mile to get the job done and give 100% in all that we do, approaching everything with a “can do attitude”. We constantly look to improve ourselves and our service, cultivating our knowledge, skill, and attitudes to achieve excellence

CREATIVITY

We always seek innovative solutions for our students so that they achieve everything they are capable of. We believe that creativity is only truly possible when it is based on a bedrock of knowledge. We cultivate creativity by providing a broad base of academic knowledge that students need to be properly creative. The knowledge we deliver is powerful in that it changes students’ perceptions, values and understanding. It encourages students to ask new questions and explore alternative explanations.

INTEGRITY

We always do the right thing. We treat others with respect and honesty, take care of our environment and utilise knowledge and understanding wisely. We nurture our students so that they become young adults of principle and character who support each other in their quest for excellence.

A key part of our Trust Dividend is that we are kind and driven, because these two qualities are not incompatible. We believe that happy, well-motivated and well-trained staff make the most effective teachers, leaders and support staff and, in turn, ensure excellence and opportunity for all. As our jobs are demanding, we strive to remove barriers and find ways to make life easier. From high-quality professional development to ensuring that there is an opportunity for a break and a cup of tea, caring for and investing in our staff is a high priority to ensure that they enjoy their time at work and thrive professionally.

We also recognise that working more flexibly can help our staff achieve a better work-life balance, as work is just one aspect of our lives and balancing our home lives can be difficult at times. To do this, we value our family-friendly policies and constantly review and evaluate our thinking to best accommodate our staff where it is possible to do so.

At The Four Stones Gateway, our staff have extensive access to an excellent package of benefits, including access to Teachers’ Pensions or Local Government Pension Scheme, the Employee Assistance Programme, staff long service recognition, Cycle to Work Scheme, Lifestyle Discount schemes and a free annual flu jab.

We have several established practices that make our Trust an excellent place to work, including:

• A strong commitment to professional development and growth: we offer access to recognised, accredited training and leadership courses such as the National Professional Qualifications
• Opportunities for promotion: we focus on growing and developing our staff through succession planning and by providing opportunities for promotion from within our schools
• Designated buddies: we ensure that staff always have someone to work alongside in order to soundboard, discuss ideas and solutions, have their thinking challenged and to challenge the thinking of others
• Ringfenced mock-marking time: each December, we have a Trust-wide TED which gives teaching teams dedicated time to the marking and moderation of Year 11 mock examinations
• A work-life balance: we do not expect our staff to answer out of hours emails and we discourage the use of personal mobile phones to retrieve and respond to emails
• Admin support: we lighten the load of our middle leaders by providing admin support throughout the year so that they can focus their time and energy on strategy and the biggest levers to develop practice
• Ringfenced time: our school teaching leaders have a reduced teaching load to ensure that they are highly visible and have maximum impact in supporting staff and achieving excellence for our students
• A focus on wellbeing: in each of our schools, a member of the senior leadership team is in charge of wellbeing and workload to evaluate our practices and provide essential support to all staff
• Refreshments: on training days, parents’ evenings and other evening events, food is always provided