Karen Marsh is the mental health lead at Southport College. She tells us about her college’s experience of senior mental health lead training and how it’s helped to further support its staff and students with their wellbeing. Southport College and KGV Sixth Form College have always offered excellent support to students who may be experiencing mental health difficulties. When the opportunity arose to appoint a senior mental health lead to complete a specialist course and embed a whole college approach, it felt like a fantastic opportunity to improve on the good work already taking place. Selec ..read more

Photo of Abby Williams Abby Williams is the KS2 Special Educational Needs (SEN) Coordinator at St Peters Church of England Primary School in Wirral. Here she shares her advice for providing quality SEN support in school. I know it’s a cliche, but I've always wanted to teach. What I didn't know is how much I would love working with SEN children and their families from the moment I had my first class. I have a passion for building relationships with SEN children. When providing SEN support, whether in the classroom or across the whole school, the most important aspect of support is being able ..read more

  Claire Lee, head teacher at Burley Oaks Primary School in West Yorkshire, shares how her school is supporting pupil wellbeing to help them as they grow up. Early intervention and support for wellbeing Pupil wellbeing is at the heart of our curriculum, which has been refocused by the impact of the pandemic and our focus on positive mental health. Our wellbeing approach and offer is well established, having evolved gradually over time. The initial impetus to make a change arose from discussions with a local clinical psychologist and the oversubscription for private mental health services ..read more

Mel Kay, Student Support Manager, has been leading the way at Newcastle College to make sure that all learners have access to period products. The period product scheme is funded by DfE and will be running until July 2024. It is available to all state-maintained schools and academies with learners over the age of 10. At Newcastle College we have been accessing free period products via the DfE scheme since spring 2021, helping to tackle period poverty and remove the stigma surrounding periods through a campaign called ‘The P Word.’ We are a large college with more than 12,000 students from all ..read more

Jackie Birch works at St. Peter's C of E Primary School in Wigan, Greater Manchester. In 2021, she won The Award for Teacher of the Year in a Primary School at the Pearson National Teaching Awards. How did it feel to win the Gold Award, and have it presented to you by some of your celebrity heroes on The One Show? It has been an amazing experience. Like most teachers, I work with a great team of people, so simply being nominated was incredibly humbling. Not for one minute did I think that I would win! I’m just doing my job and I’m very fortunate that it’s a job I love. There was lots of secre ..read more

The Bemrose School in Derby has pupils aged 3-19. They started delivering tutoring in October 2020 to compensate for lost learning during the pandemic. Executive headteacher, Neil Wilkinson encourages other schools to develop a flexible tutoring model that is responsive to the needs of pupils and parents.  In the current academic year, we're delivering tutoring to 600 pupils at primary and secondary level using all three subsidised routes of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP): academic mentors, tuition partners and school-led tutoring. This has allowed us to reach a greater number of ..read more

Stephanie Bendall is Deputy Head at Maiden Erlegh School in Berkshire. She talks to us about how the school has reduced bullying, with the help of their students aged 11-18. They have also been recognised as an Anti-Bullying Gold Award winner by the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA). Audit and action planning Three years ago, we started to use the ‘All Together Programme’ which is now known as the ‘United Against Bullying Programme’ developed for schools by the Anti-Bullying Alliance. Each year since, we have followed the same process: Gathering student feedback via a questionnaire, this allows u ..read more

One of the objectives of the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy is to increase opportunities for children and young people to learn from and connect with nature and improve biodiversity in their schools. There are a number of schools across the country already doing fantastic work in this space, one of which is St Alban’s CE (Aided) Primary School, which has won awards for its commitment to sustainability, including Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust’s first ‘Wilder School of the Year’ in 2021. Their outdoor education lead, Julie Newman, shares how t ..read more

The Early Career Framework (ECF) reforms were rolled out nationally in September 2021. We invited practitioners to share how they support their early career teachers (ECTs) to apply the content of the provider-led ECF based training programmes to their school’s context.  Responding to ECTs’ strengths and areas for development “If there is an area where the mentor has established their ECT is stronger, they will drip feed in other skills that may be a current priority to help their development. Since mentors can access all the ECF training modules in advance, they can use any of th ..read more

In this blog post, several schools from across the country share their different ways and approaches to supporting pupil and staff wellbeing. Wellbeing in a complex needs school Louisa Williams is Assistant Head Teacher and Mental Health Lead, at John Grant school, a complex needs school in Norfolk.  Enabling learning within a complex needs school means meeting children’s needs physically and mentally alongside our staff members who also need support. Handling emotions is embedded within the daily curriculum, in particular through the use of an adapted curriculum framework for “Zones of ..read more