Abstract

Educational inequality remains a significant issue within Oxfordshire, with disadvantaged

pupils being much less likely to pass GCSE English and Maths and progress to higher

education. To address this local educational inequality, the University of Oxford is looking to

deliver character-cultivating, co-curricular programmes to local school students. This

endeavour aligns with the University's newfound commitment to supporting its local

community. This endeavour also aligns with SDG 3.4, which promotes mental health and well-

being, and SDG 4.7, which promotes ethical and global citizenship. In this pilot study, we

aimed to identify the character strengths that these co-curricular programmes should focus on

cultivating. To achieve this aim, we built upon the VIA Youth Framework and existing

character education literature, adopting both an engaged scholarship and mixed-methods

approach, which consisted of a self-administered questionnaire and semi-structured interviews.

Whilst our findings are only preliminary, they suggest that these programmes should focus on

cultivating the following six character strengths: leadership, perseverance, judgement, self-

regulation, social intelligence and teamwork. A similar, most robust study on a larger sample

would allow more conclusive results to be determined.