As a small school, we have limited resources although we have a clear strategic and explicit response to supporting mental health and wellbeing across the school.

 

The senior leadership team consists of the headteacher and 2 senior teachers with responsibility for Curriculum Development and Behaviour for Learning. The school improvement plan has clear priorities for improvement. The third priority explicitly outlines the schools response to develop resilience and for children to be part of the making improvements to the school. These priorities are linked across all school improvement plans written by all staff in the school. An example school improvement plan with a focus on PE shows the link with wellbeing and children taking the lead through the wellbeing council.

 

The attached working paper article succinctly demonstrates how the school has strategically used a Ideal Selves and pupil voice to support school improvement.

 

The school has an embedded approach to themed weeks across the curriculum which always link to positive emotions. There is always a clear focus on supporting children to make links with positive emotions across the curriculum. For example, in last year's RE themed week, all children produced a leaf to show what they believe in linked with the positive emotions. A recent enterprise week gave the opportunity for children to respond to a pupil questionnaire showing that children are not fully aware of their emotions so they decided to produce stress balls and bookmarks with a positive slant to sell.

 

The school council is led by a member of the SLT and is named according to the focus for the year. For example we have had a Character Council and a Leadership Council. We currently have a Wellbeing Council. This group of pupils are a key driver in making changes across the school. They will complete learning walks and also interpret pupil questionnaires.

 

Each year, the school has a clear focus which is introduced to staff through the INSET at the beginning of the year. For example this year, we started the year with a focus on the brain and the impact that too much stress has on how the brain functions. Last year, we focused on ensuring our virtues and values were embedding across the whole curriculum.

 

During performance management with staff, a coaching approach is used to support staff to work through and understand their character strengths. This then helps staff to understand how they can nurture these strengths when working towards achieving agreed targets.