Friday 21 June 2019

St Johns Receives Wellbeing Award for Schools

St John's has been awarded the prestigious Wellbeing Award for Schools (WAS), which “focuses on ensuring effective practice and provision is in place that promotes the emotional wellbeing and mental health of both staff and pupils.”

The WAS report highlighted the following strengths in St John's approach to the wellbeing of our staff and pupils:

• St John’s is a welcoming, caring and aspirational school. 
• Ensuring pupils feel safe and happy is at the heart of all school does; leaders consider the impact on emotional wellbeing in all decision making.
• The passion and commitment of the award coordinator has enabled whole school responsibility and ownership of the work towards the award. The WAS framework has been used to provide a coherent approach to evaluating and strengthening practice.
• The design of the new building and the use of space provides a stimulating learning environment which supports pupils’ wellbeing.
• Staff know the pupils well. The class logs make information recording and sharing thorough. Pupil safeguarding is addressed at weekly meetings enabling quick responses to the needs of pupils.  The transition and induction processes ensure change is managed smoothly and effectively for pupils and staff. 
• The school has an inclusive culture.  The pupils attending the speech and language ARP are integrated with the mainstream school.  The school works effectively with a range of partners agencies to provide support for the whole school community including Place2Be.  The success of Place2Be on supporting the wellbeing and mental health of pupils, staff and parents was evident through the conversations with the school community and the evaluations in the portfolio.
• Leaders place a strong emphasis on developing positive relationships throughout the school community, shown, for example, in the Peace Pathway model used to resolve friendship issues.
• Pupils are proud of the school and can articulate how the PSHE curriculum teaches them about keeping healthy and the many other ways in which the school supports their wellbeing.  Confidence and resilience are developed through using Growth Mindset approaches. The empowering Peer Mediator and Red Cap roles clearly have a positive influence on friendships and playtimes.
• The partnership and trust developed with parents, starting when their children first join the school, impacts positively on families’ wellbeing. Parents feel confident that their children are in a safe environment and can voice concerns about their children without fear of judgement. 
• Staff feel well supported by senior leaders. Leaders have created a culture in which everybody feels listened to and valued and which places importance on family life.  Staff commented that they can be “completely honest about what is going on for them” and that they “can talk to anyone”.
• Governors are committed to ensuring that the work to promote positive wellbeing and mental health will continue to be a high priority in the future.