Sri Bestari International School runs on a four-part value framework: Growth Mindset, Resilience, Integrity, and Teamwork. Abbreviated as G.R.I.T., it appears on our walls, in our communications, and in every conversation about the kind of students — and people — we are working to develop. But an acronym on a wall is not a pedagogy. The question worth asking is: what does G.R.I.T. look like when a Year 7 student is stuck on a problem she cannot solve? What does it look like at 3:00 PM on a Thursday when a team project is due and two members disagree? This post answers that question specifically.
Understanding how core values translate into observable classroom behaviour matters as much for parents choosing a school as for students navigating one. The Cambridge curriculum at SBIS provides the academic framework. G.R.I.T. provides the character framework — and the two work together more deliberately than most prospective families realise. For the school’s full philosophy behind this, see our history and beliefs.
Growth Mindset: Trained, Not Assumed
Growth Mindset is often treated as an aspiration — the kind of thing mentioned in a school’s prospectus and then left to chance. At SBIS, it is structured into the learning environment through specific practices that make it observable and teachable, not merely hoped for.
In Early Years, this begins with language. Teachers model explicit acknowledgment — of effort, of help received, of difficulty overcome. Children are prompted to name what made something hard and what made it possible. In Primary, this evolves into reflective writing: students identify what they found challenging in a project and who or what supported them through it. By Secondary, growth mindset is framed within the broader context of global awareness — understanding that access to education and skilled teachers is not universal, and that this comes with responsibility.
The observable result is not a student who says “thank you” more often. It is a student who has a more accurate model of how outcomes actually happen — who understands that achievement is rarely individual, and who is therefore more willing to contribute to others’ success.
Resilience: Built Through Productive Struggle
Resilience is the most misunderstood of the four G.R.I.T. values, because it is often confused with toughness or the absence of difficulty. At SBIS, resilience is not the capacity to avoid challenge. It is the learned ability to remain functional and forward-moving when challenge is present — and it is built, not born.
This means our teachers are trained to distinguish between productive struggle and unproductive struggle. Productive struggle is when a student is genuinely challenged but has the tools, the scaffolding, and the support to work through the difficulty. Unproductive struggle is when a student is simply lost — without the foundations to engage with the problem at all. The teacher’s job is to ensure students are in the first category, not the second.
A concrete example: when a Year 9 student receives a draft essay back with substantive feedback rather than a corrected version, the discomfort of having to redo work is deliberate. The teacher does not fix the essay. The teacher asks questions that help the student identify what needs to change and why. This is slower. It is more uncomfortable. And it is far more effective at building the cognitive resilience that Cambridge IGCSE examinations — and professional life — ultimately demand. You can read more about how our Secondary programme is designed to prepare students for this.
Integrity: The Value That Is Hardest to Fake
Integrity is the G.R.I.T. value that most resists being taught through direct instruction. You cannot run a lesson on integrity and expect the outcome to be an honest student. What you can do is design systems and environments where integrity is structurally reinforced — where doing the right thing is the path of least resistance, and where dishonesty carries real, consistent consequences.
At SBIS, this shows up in several ways. Assessment design under the Cambridge framework includes individual components — oral examinations, individual coursework, practical experiments — that are difficult to falsify. Peer review processes in group work require students to evaluate each other’s contributions honestly. And the school’s school services and co-curricular programme is deliberately structured so that leadership roles — prefects, team captains, event committees — carry real responsibility and real accountability, not just titles.
The measure of whether a school is genuinely developing integrity is simple: what happens when a student does the wrong thing, and nobody would have found out? The answer to that question — over thousands of small moments across a school career — is what integrity actually means in practice.
Teamwork: Structured, Not Assumed
The fourth G.R.I.T. value is Teamwork — and like Growth Mindset, it is only meaningful when it is taught rather than assumed. Putting students in groups is not teamwork. Assigning a group project with a single shared grade is not teamwork. Teamwork, as SBIS defines and teaches it, involves specific skills: role distribution, constructive disagreement, collective accountability, and the capacity to recover a working relationship after conflict.
These skills are developed progressively. In Key Stage 1 and 2, collaborative tasks are short and closely facilitated. Students learn the vocabulary of collaboration — how to express disagreement without dismissing, how to ask for help without delegating entirely. In Key Stage 3 and 4, the complexity increases: multi-week projects, cross-subject collaboration, and assessment criteria that include explicit marks for process as well as product.
The EduVenture programme — SBIS’s signature outdoor and thematic learning initiative — puts teamwork under its most demanding conditions: unfamiliar environments, real problems, time pressure, and no teacher making decisions on the group’s behalf. This is where G.R.I.T. as a whole is most visibly tested, and most visibly developed.
What G.R.I.T. Looks Like Across a School Day
To make this concrete: below are five moments from a typical SBIS school day where G.R.I.T. is not being talked about, but being practised.
- Morning assembly: Year 10 students deliver a structured reflection on a community challenge they engaged with. Growth Mindset and Teamwork in practice.
- Year 5 mathematics: Students work through an open-ended problem in pairs. When they reach an impasse, the teacher asks a question rather than providing an answer. Resilience and Growth Mindset.
- Key Stage 3 EduVenture debrief: Students are asked what went wrong during the outdoor activity, what they did about it, and what they would do differently. All four values, in retrospect.
- Year 8 group essay: One student disagrees with the group’s thesis. The teacher facilitates a structured debate rather than resolving it. Integrity and Teamwork in their most demanding form.
- Year 11 pre-exam period: Students who have received difficult mock results are met with a goal-setting conversation, not reassurance. Resilience, structured.
Why This Matters for University and Career Readiness
Cambridge IGCSE and A-Level results are the academic gateway to university. But the evidence from higher education institutions and graduate employers is consistent: the students who perform best are not those with the highest entry grades — they are those who know how to manage difficulty, collaborate under pressure, and sustain motivation through extended challenge.
G.R.I.T. at SBIS is not an alternative to academic rigour. It is the character infrastructure that makes academic rigour sustainable and transferable. When a student leaves SBIS with a strong IGCSE profile and a genuinely developed capacity for resilience, integrity, collaborative work, and a growth mindset, they are not simply well-qualified. They are prepared. Read what SBIS parents say about the difference they see in their children after joining the school.
Pro Tip: When visiting SBIS on an Open Day, ask teachers not what the school’s values are — you can read those on the wall — but to give you a specific example of a time a student failed at something and what happened next. The answer to that question will tell you more about whether G.R.I.T. is practised or merely proclaimed than any prospectus ever will.