I coined a new educational term this week: entwiculum.

I know: it won’t catch on. It’s a rubbish portmanteau word (pace Lewis Carroll), but will serve for the purpose of this blog.

It was inspired by two things happening in quick succession. First, earlier this week Warwick Mansell was writing in the TES about how he prayed he would never have to applaud the kind of alleged “hero head” who goes into a struggling school and gains plaudits for the single task of turning around its exam results.

I share his view. The danger in concentrating solely on results is that we too easily forget what real education is about. “Real education” - I’ll stick my neck out and use that term.

For education is about the whole person, not about qualifications gained.

Moreover, it’s rounded, resilient individuals who score best when it comes to those necessary certificates.

There: I’ve said it. It’s about resilience and building the whole character.

Earlier this week, at a fundraising bash on the 28th floor of Millbank Tower, I was listening to the charismatic and visionary founder of The Challenger Trust, Charlie Rigby.

Heads as long in the tooth as I am will remember Mr Rigby as founder of World Challenge Expeditions, an organisation that, a quarter of a century ago, set the standard for character-building expeditions.

Young people were expected to raise the cost themselves for the expeditions by getting stuck in and working to do it. And, as well as facing personal physical challenges on Kilimanjaro, in the Himalayas or the jungles of Malaysia, they were required to complete a service element, working in orphanages and other needy spots.

Mr Rigby sold on that business many years ago. Now, his Challenger Trust is a multi-academy trust (MAT), and he’s also busy helping to provide what he describes as the glue between independent and state schools as they seek (regardless of current government pressure) to engage in really meaningful joint working.

Mr Rigby’s vigour and sense of mission are undiminished: this is scarcely surprising, since the imperative driving him is as powerful as ever.

If Charlie’s expeditions once involved exotic trips, his work with the Challenger MAT seeks to give children life-changing experiences outside the classroom at very modest cost.

And now he’s out actually to prove that what’s learned outside the classroom builds the character that helps children to thrive in it.

The curriculum and extracurricular life are inextricably entwined, he said: hence my suggestion (not an entirely serious one) that we might usefully start talking about entwiculum.

Mr Rigby has enlisted the help of the Relational Schools Foundation’s executive director, Dr Robert Loe, to produce a report that makes compelling reading.

Studying outcomes from a trip to the Pyrenees in which Challenger Schools’ children learnt to ski, drive dog-sleds and get about in snowshoes (new experiences to all), they found on average a 50 per cent increase (my rounded figure) in such aspects of character as children’s sense of the importance of working together; their trust and comradeship in their peers; their working relationship with their teachers (an important thing to note: their teachers were with them). In short:

“The expedition had a very positive impact on the quality of student to student, and student to teacher relationships … students felt they were more likely to be listened to and understood, more likely to feel acknowledged, appreciated and supported by their teachers and that they could trust others in the class more than before …

“The teachers themselves reported having more respect for individual students, more of a sense of loyalty and commitment to them as a group …”

These findings are powerful: but will the proof stand up?

Yes, but only (for now) to those of us who already believe in the central importance of building character.

Nonetheless, the evidence grows.

One day policymakers must accept that government cannot leave this vital task to the better-resourced independent sector, to generous donors supporting such operators in the field as The Challenger Trust, and to those visionary heads who are Warwick Mansell’s true heroes.

At the last, government will have no option but to put entwiculum at the heart of education and fund it properly.

Dr Bernard Trafford is headteacher of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne and a former chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. The views expressed here are personal. He tweets at @bernardtrafford

To read more columns, view his back catalogue.

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