VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM
View from the classroom
ethnic backgrounds and many children arrive at school not speaking English. Assessment on entry shows that the majority of children enter reception well below the national average, and we have a higher than average percentage of casual admissions. 36% of our pupils receive pupil premium, 57%
are from the poorest 10% of households and 99% are from the most deprived 30%.
You received the Carnegie Centre of Excellence Mental Health Award for Schools in the summer - can you tell us what this award recognises? The award recognises schools who have a whole school strategic approach to mental health well- being. It allowed us to focus on all aspects of our academy from policy to provision and ensured we included all stakeholders. It wasn’t so much the gaining of the award but the process leading up to it.
T
his month, in our regular feature going behind the gates of the nation’s schools,
we speak to Kyrstie Joslin, headteacher at Boothroyd Primary Academy in Dewsbury. In the summer the school was presented with the Carnegie Centre of Excellence Mental Health Award for Schools in recognition of its strategic leadership of school-wide mental health wellbeing initiatives – here, Kyrstie explains what the Award means to the school, and describes the processes now in place to help staff and pupil mental wellbeing.
Tell us about your school Boothroyd Academy is a three form primary school with over 600 pupils primarily from socially deprived areas. 95% of our children are from
Can you tell us about the work you've done on wellbeing in the school? I am a firm believer in the premise that happy staff result in happy children. Research has shown that there are positive effects on attainment in children who are happy and are emotionally stable. So, we started with the staff, thinking about
how we could make the workplace a happier and less stressful place to be. It sounds simplistic but we just asked them what we could do to make their jobs more enjoyable. From this initial discussion we were able to address over 85% of issues immediately - this ranged from changing procedures, making paperwork simpler, changing hours of working to radical changes such as agreeing not to complete lesson observations or work scrutiny but to adopt a coaching model.
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www.education-today.co.uk October 2018
Immediately staff felt listened to, and it was the
ignition that started a much more open culture within the school. We introduced staff happiness meetings to
create a sense of team fun and we have had some great fun on bouncy castles, bouncing down water slides on inflatables and playing bingo for example. We also have staff appreciation breakfasts every term where staff get
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