Mr. Christian Saenger

FROM DUMPTON SCHOOL, DORSET

Mr. Christian Saenger speaks about life at Dumpton School, their positive mindset and approach to learning. He also discusses their recent work related to emotional intelligence and the RULER initiative, character learning, the Dumpton Way and the Dumpton Diploma.

Can you tell us a little about the points of entry and requirements for children and families considering applying to Dumpton School?

We are a two to thirteen school, so we’ve got this amazing range of ages that the children can join us at, right from the word ‘go’ as a two-year-old in the nursery. The majority of children who come through Dumpton do join in the nursery at some point. But equally, children join Dumpton all the time, and can join Dumpton at any point.

In terms of entry requirements, we’re sort of proudly non-selective academically, despite having a fantastic academic reputation and great outcomes. We have children of all abilities at Dumpton, and it’s our job to get the best out of every single child. Our main admissions criteria really are children’s ability to meet our school core values of being kind, looking after the people around them and aiming high, being able to get stuck in, to give it their best, and to try really hard. If children are able to do that, then Dumpton is going to be a fantastic place for them to be.

Which schools does Dumpton tend to send children to at 11 plus and 13 plus?

The majority of families are looking at us to keep their children there until 13 plus and to spring-board on to independent schools in our local area. We’ve got some fantastic Senior schools around us. Around 50% of children will end up going to Hanford after Dumpton - that’s certainly the biggest school that we feed to. But, equally, schools like Bryanston, Clayesmore, Ballard, Embley and Milton Abbey are other destinations in our local area. We also send children off to boarding, and we’ve had children go to Wellington, Sherbourne and Millfield. We’ve got children looking at Winchester and Eton at the moment, so those schools are possible as well at 13 plus.

A small number of families - between 10% and 20% - will look really hard at sitting the 11 plus. We’ve got some excellent grammar schools in this area, and, again, children are very successful if they go down that route.

The school motto is: ‘You can because you think you can.’ Can you explain the significance of this to your school’s community?

I think that’s true of ‘You can because you think you can’. Of course, it all taps into that idea of having a growth mindset, and the powerful impact that having a positive mindset, a positive attitude to yourself, can have on your achievement, your attainment, your success and your happiness in life. So I think that mindset and that approach is very much, again, a part of our culture. And you can see it as you go around the school – all the children do everything at Dumpton. That self-belief, that ‘You can because you think you can’, and your progress and your future is in your hands.

Dumpton School has been looking closely at emotional intelligence. How do you feel that your research-based work RULER is benefitting the children?

This is something that I am very passionate about, and I think something that as a school community we’re very passionate about as well. It actually came on the back of the COVID pandemic, when obviously all of us went through so much, such a testing time. Of course, just like mental health is hugely important for children’s futures, so is being emotionally intelligent. So is being able to understand your own emotions, read other people’s emotions. It lies at the heart of building relationships, at the heart of working in a team environment, of being a leader. Almost anything you can think of that children are going to do in their futures relies on having that strong social and emotional intelligence in order to thrive in the world.

So, for all of those reasons, we have introduced a program at Dumpton called RULER, which was born out of research at Yale University into how we can build emotional literacy in children. It uses a range of strategies from an early age giving children the tools to understand their own emotions, to be able to label their own emotions, to express and talk about their own emotions, which of course is so key in terms of learning how to manage their own emotions. But equally in terms of them being able to understand how other people are feeling, really working on empathy and recognising how other people might be feeling and the things that we can do to make that better or, indeed, worse.

The RULER approach has been embedded throughout the school. It’s just been such a wonderful thing to see the impact that it’s had. Firstly, I think in just changing the culture to one where children feel they really can talk about emotions. There’s that traditional, old-fashioned culture of just: “You’ll be fine, get over it, pull yourself together, stop worrying about it, stop crying, come on, get back involved.” And actually, that is the start and the tip of the iceberg of the things that can turn children into quite a big problem later on in their lives. If they’ve been told not to talk about how they’re feeling, that we’re not interested in how they’re feeling, that’s when children bottle things up. That’s when, later in life, they have difficulties.

If we have a culture where children are in an environment where we all talk about our emotions, where teachers model talking about their emotions –and that’s what we all do as a staff, one of our tools is a Mood Metre, where we break emotions down into four colours, four quadrants of colour. The different quadrants mean different things, so if you’re feeling yellow, it means you’re really excited and positive and happy. Green is that you’re feeling positive, but you’re quite calm and sedate and serene. Red is that you’re feeling really negative and really cross and angry about things. Blue is a bit more of a negative, but it’s a bit of a sad feeling, a bit worried about something or anxious. For young children, they can understand that. They can understand the colour first and then the emotion words come on top of that. All the time, teachers will model to the students: “Gosh, I’m feeling a bit blue today because I’ve actually had a really difficult morning, my dog’s had to go to the vets and

TURN BACK TO PAGE 18 to read about What Makes Me Do The Things I Do? and developing emotional intelligence

I’m a bit worried about it.” And again, children seeing that modelled to them by the adults, it validates their own feelings.

So we’re noticing lots of benefits, we’re noticing children who can express their emotions and can express problems in a way they couldn’t before. We’re seeing huge benefits to conflict resolution – that classic example of two children who both feel they’re in the right, suddenly we’re using RULER to help them see how the other child is feeling. Again, it just completely changes the lens of the issue and allows them to empathise and reflect, rather than just think about themselves.

It’s worthy of note that we are also using some of our older children to model discussing their feelings and using the RULER approach to the early years and pre-prep children. A few of our older children - certainly those of them that have had worries and concerns - have said how amazing it is to have that validated, that it’s ok to be anxious. It’s good to talk to people. All of those things have been really important messages.

As a school, Dumpton is working on ‘character’ education for the children. Can you tell us a little more about this and how it is being balanced with academic work?

You can probably tell by lots of what I’ve talked about that we’re really interested in developing the whole child. Now Dumpton’s got a fantastic academic reputation. That really matters to us. Our outcomes from the academic point of view are superb. We get lots and lots of academic scholarships, we put a lot of work into it. We’ve got some fantastic teaching, we really, really care about that.

I think what we haven’t been as good at doing is being as explicit about character education as we are about academic education. How much do we get them to reflect on how they’re developing their character, on areas that are real strengths and areas that they

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So, we’ve introduced a framework at Dumpton called ‘The Dumpton Way’, which has got seven areas of character that we think are really important. We call them our ‘Virtues’. The children constantly are exposed to these virtues during their daily lives. Whether they’re playing sport, whether they’re in the classroom, we pick up on these virtues. Down in the Pre-Prep, the children are using metacognition when making these little characters to help them understand: “What do I need to do for this task? Do I need to be really resilient because it’s going to be tricky?” They reflect again on the character attitude as well as those academic skills that they need. We’re really excited about this as this is the first year that we’ve brought that in.

Another big element of character education is that you don’t assess children in the same way as you would do academically. You don’t give them grades, you don’t say: “You’re an ‘A’ grade in empathy.” That doesn’t really help anyone, because all children are different. It’s very hard to judge and you’d waste lots of time trying to do it. What’s really, really useful – and again, all of the research around character education shows this – is to be explicit about the way that you want children to develop their character. Get them to reflect on it themselves, get them to consider how empathetic they’ve been, get them to reflect on a moment where they’ve really shown empathy. That’s a really good way of increasing that self-awareness, and that independence that children need to be able to flourish in their lives. So, it’s something we’re really excited about, and there’s lots more that we want to do.

Can you tell us a little about The Dumpton Diploma, your bespoke curriculum for Year 7 and Year 8 that blends traditional learning with broader character education?

So, in Year 7 and Year 8, The Dumpton Diploma includes six different domains. One of those is their academic achievements. At Dumpton, some still do the Common Entrance, some do what we call The Dumpton Certificate, which is sort of ‘Common Entrance Lite’, really. A good, rigorous set of exams that are a little bit trimmed down to suit our needs. But as well as that, The Dumpton Diploma includes five other areas that are all linked to their all-round development. There’s an Independent Project Qualification that all the children do; their co-curricular participation, how they’ve got involved in sport and music and performing arts, all the other things they’ve done; there’s a Leadership Award, all of our children get the chance to do some leadership activities and, again, reflecting on that, learning about that.

There is a trip at the beginning of Year 8 which we call the Scotland Wilderness Adventure, and this is part of The Dumpton Diploma. The children, to achieve The Dumpton Diploma, have to survive (and I use the word ‘survive’ quite pointedly) this week in Scotland. It’s an amazing adventure school in the North West coast, which is a bit like a Bear Grylls-type experience. It’s a brilliant educational experience, even though they don’t ever have a lesson. They learn so much about themselves.

So, that’s part of The Dumpton Diploma, as well as – and this is the last strand – their reflection of their character education, how they’ve seen themselves develop as people when they’ve been here. When they leave Dumpton, they’ve got this lovely record of their achievements, that are so much broader than just their hopefully brilliant set of exam results and comments from their teacher about their learning. It paints a far better picture of that incredibly broad, incredibly varied, incredibly wholesome experience that they’ve had here. So, we’re really excited about that as well, and this Year 8 cohort are the first who will receive their Dumpton Diploma on Speech Day. It will be a lovely memento for them to look at. So, that’s an exciting development as well.

We would like to thank the Headmaster at Dumpton School, Mr. Christian Saenger, for giving up his time to speak to us.