Mental Health and Wellbeing
Well-Being at Nether Stowe
We take the well-being of our staff and students extremely seriously and have implemented a number of strategies for both students and staff to create a supportive working environment for everyone.
For students we:
- Hold drop-in wellbeing sessions at lunchtime for students twice a week
- Offer specific exam stress support sessions once a week at lunchtime
- Run morning meditation sessions before school once a week
- Offer 121 support to support students’ wellbeing
- Deliver assemblies at least once every term with a mental health focus
- Organise form time activities with a mental health focus at least once every half term
- Incorporate mental health sessions into our PSHE programme and some of these sessions are supported by Birmingham YMCA
- Run a mental health peer mentoring programme. Research suggests that young people feel more comfortable talking to their peers
- Organise events throughout the year to promote the importance of wellbeing – World Mental Health Day, Time to Change Day, Mental Health Awareness Week
- Hold ‘Curry and Chat’ lunchtimes once a term to encourage students and staff to sit, eat and chat with each other
For staff we:
- Provide bespoke personal development days for all staff in the school calendar to supportive effective work-life balance.
- Focus on the individual: our appraisal and professional development systems are structured to focus on personalised development – both within and beyond – the classroom. The initiative also reduces the workload burden on staff.
- Undertake regular staff voice to enable all-staff input into school evaluation and development
- Centralise sanctions to enable teachers to focus on what is most important – teaching and learning.
- Reduce the number of data-collection points in the school year to focus on quality information not needless data collection.
- Make assessment effective, not time-consuming: our assessment policy focuses on quality not quantity. We ensure our staff are providing high-quality feedback that enables pupils to act on what they need to do to improve, without unnecessarily adding to workload.
Resilience Toolkits (Sarah Terry)
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