Values-based Education (VbE) is an approach to education for schools and other settings. At its heart, its principles are simple. Yet it has a profound impact on learners, schools and on the wider community. VbE has already transformed many schools by giving learners access to an ethical vocabulary based on human values, such as respect, justice, integrity, harmony, trust and honesty.

VbE empowers educational settings to underpin their life and curriculum with universal positive human values such as respect, integrity, honesty and compassion.

It is an approach that differs from values education in one particular respect. Values education teaches learners about values. Values-based Education provides a teaching environment in which learners experience those positive universal values first hand throughout their schooling.

An effective VbE environment has three core foundations. All adults model the positive universal values that the school community itself has chosen. The values are developed into an ethical vocabulary which empowers learners and staff to articulate basic and advanced ethical concepts.

And the school creates time and space for children to develop reflective practices so their values experiences can be processed into a living guide to self- and interpersonal awareness. The outcome of developing such an ethical vocabulary is ethical intelligence, which Neil Hawkes, founder of VbE, argues is the most important intelligence for the sustainability of our world.

The ethical vocabulary is the foundation of a new universal narrative through which all human beings, irrespective of culture; religion or ethnicity can communicate, thereby establishing trust and wellbeing.

The outcome of Values-based Education is self-leadership, which enables each individual to work towards fulfilling their wonderful potential.