The tutor acts as the primary advocate for their tutees and, in many respects, acts as their Duston School parent. This is the person that parents/guardians will primarily have contact with to discuss their son/daughter's education.

The Duston School is built upon three core values, Resilience, Respect and Aspiration. We expect all of our students to exhibit and display these core traits in their daily life at The Duston School, within the wider community and as they move into the next phase of their life once they leave our educational setting.

The Duston School community was canvassed to help create a new school mantra, 'Knowledge itself is power'. This echoes the words of Kofi Annan, "Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family." Knowledge provides us with the power to help others, in a variety of ways. It is also something that is good for our own self esteem. In addition, knowledge imbues us with authority and enables us to act and interact with others in a more moral way. As a school, we feel knowledge is power because:

Knowledge sets us free, and makes us less dependent on others. Freedom is essential to any democracy. Being truly free means that we do not use our power to control other people against their will.

True knowledge commands more respect that mere empty authority within a hierarchy ever could. If we have knowledge, we can direct others' decisions and help them to enhance their lives. Having knowledge about a relevant subject imbues us with authority. No matter who we are, or how old we are, if we have knowledge that is useful to other people, then those people will respect us.

Possessing knowledge can really give us a feeling of self-fulfilment and confidence. Knowledge is something that we can always fall back on. In addition, if we find ourselves facing a trial in life, knowledge can enable us to find a solution to the issue that boosts our self-esteem even further.

The process of seeking and finding knowledge teaches us to have a positive attitude about life. It teaches us to be motivated, determined, engaged with the world and self-reliant. It also fills us with enthusiasm and joy.

When we have knowledge, we can act more morally. Possessed of all the facts and the relevant skills, we can put our desire to help others into practice much better than we could do if we had less knowledge. For example, if we have some money that we wish to donate to charity, knowing facts about how that money could best be used will enable us to help the greatest number of people with it.

In every classroom students will be referred to our classroom charter, which looks as follows: