FEATURE FOCUS: MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Why it’s time to put health and wellbeing at the core of school life
academic achievement are not important measures, or that schools should lose their focus on teaching and learning. Far from it. The debate is about how we get there and what kind of environment we should deliver to achieve the ultimate dream: a cohort of happy, healthy, confident learners, armed with the tools to be the best they can possibly be in their future lives.
Schools have had to deal with extra pressures resulting from the pandemic, which has put a huge strain on staff and children, and we now face the greatest cost-of-living crisis of this generation.
We are losing teachers every day. Brilliant professionals that are choosing to walk away from the profession they love and trained for. They are stressed, overwhelmed, and disenchanted.
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n our first of three feature-length articles this month on health and wellbeing in schools, Chris Wright, Head of Health & Wellbeing, Youth Sport Trust, explains why he believes health and wellbeing should be at the heart of the nation’s school system.
There’s a growing movement in the UK which believes that health and wellbeing is the route to academic success - and should be at the heart of the school system if we want to reach a Nirvana in which every child is able to achieve their true potential.
That’s not to say that exam results and
We have children trying to engage with learning who are hungry, lonely, inactive, with poor physical and mental health and ill-equipped for the world of work.
The free-to-join Well Schools movement, powered by national charity the Youth Sport Trust and the BUPA Foundation, is at the heart of this debate.
It now has more than 1,200 primary and secondary schools on board, from right across the UK, in a community in which tried and tested solutions and support for these challenges can be shared.
The aim for all these schools is to place the 26
www.education-today.co.uk
health and wellbeing of staff and pupils at the heart of everything they do.
When you consider the changes taking place in the UK, and the need for change in our education system, then the time is right for action. There has never been a more important time to prioritise the health and wellbeing of teachers and children to bring about that change.
What defines a Well School? A Well School builds everything it does from the foundations of staff and pupil health and wellbeing.
We see it as something that everyone can buy into; an end goal which should unite education rather than divide it.
It is about prioritising staff health and wellbeing, ensuring every child is equipped with the human skills they need for adulthood, built on a foundation of positive physical and mental health.
The key here is for schools and education leaders to understand that children and young people are more effective learners when they are happy and well.
It’s important to say at this point that Well Schools is not a programme, quality mark or intervention. There’s no rule book on how it should be done and nobody at the top telling schools what to do or drawing up regulations about how they do it.
Instead, there’s a realisation that every school and Trust has its own unique challenges, and
September 2022
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