Tradition. Inclusion. Community. Kindness.

These four words are deliberately simple. They are the promises we keep, day after day, child after child.

• Tradition gives pupils roots: a sense of story, standards, and belonging.  It helps young people hold steady when life is noisy, fast-moving, and sometimes superficial.
• Inclusion gives pupils dignity: the conviction that they are known and valued, and that difference is welcomed.  In a diverse society, inclusion is how a community stays healthy and just.
• Community gives pupils strength: the assurance that they are not doing life alone.  Our size matters here; we are large enough to offer breadth and small enough for every pupil to be truly known.
• Kindness gives pupils moral courage: not softness or lowered expectations, but a strong, disciplined habit of treating others well.
  
  

 Put together, TICK describes our education: ambitious and human; warm and challenging; rooted and outward-looking.

Personal Best

Every pupil is encouraged to be their personal best: academically, socially and personally.  We celebrate progress as well as achievement and we measure success in the fullest sense: character formed, friendships made, talents discovered, and confidence earned. 

We aim to give every Dover College pupil something deeper than success in the moment: an education that forms character, capability and conscience for the world they are entering. The 21st century asks young people to be adaptable without losing their bearings; confident without becoming self-centred; ambitious without becoming anxious; and compassionate without becoming passive.  That is why we are explicit about what we are trying to grow.

Our curriculum, co-curriculum and pastoral life are therefore shaped around eight competencies.  They describe the habits of mind and heart that allow children not only to achieve, but to flourish: Self-Knowledge and Confidence; Resilience and Tenacity; a Personal Best Mindset; Curiosity and Independent Thinking; Communication and Collaboration; Empathy and Kindness; Leadership, Service and Initiative; and Global and Cultural Awareness.  These are not abstract ideals. They are practised daily in classrooms, on stages and sports fields, in Houses, in Chapel, and in the relationships that make a school feel like home.

Together, these competencies ensure pupils leave Dover College ready, academically, emotionally and socially, for life beyond The Close.

Our Christian foundations in a modern Britain

The Christian faith has been at the heart of Dover College’s spiritual identity since our founding and it continues to shape our approach to the whole person.  In today’s multicultural Britain, we remain true to those foundations while warmly welcoming families of all faith backgrounds and those of none.  Chapel and the wider life of the College invite pupils to think deeply: about meaning, truth, conscience, gratitude and service.  Our spiritual aim is to nurture faith where it exists, while awakening curiosity in every pupil about their spiritual dimension and their responsibility to others