Wellbeing

Wellbeing – is a golden thread at the heart of our Curriculum

Wellbeing is a golden strand at the heart of our shine curriculum, looking after the health and wellbeing of our pupils and staff is incredibly important to us. We link our wellbeing closely with our PSHE and keeping children safe and empowering children to understand how to look after themselves and keep themselves safe. Our policy and overview show how we teach PSHE across the curriculum and annually specifically focus on areas such as: ESafety, antibullying, NSPCC stay safe speak out and NSPCC PANTS rule. We also teach our children mindfulness, yoga, zumba, MISP (massage in schools programme) and give them regular emotional workshops to help them find strategies to be calm and manage living in a busy and sometimes stressful world. We always work to build self-esteem and a strong respectful pupil voice. We have Buddies across the school to train and develop caring and responsible partnerships and relationships between older and younger children. We work hard and are committed to supporting our staff with wellbeing to ensure that they feel supported, cared for and are able to manage their busy lives so that they can balance work and home life. We are currently working towards achieving the ‘Happiness award’. Mrs Saville & Mrs Crowley have had their training in this and working on the award. 

As part of our ‘reach for the stars’ school improvement we have made Mental Health and wellbeing a key priority this year, as well as it being a golden thread in our Shine Curriculum. We have worked with professional wellbeing expert Caroline Siddell (one of our parents) and together we have written our own AKPS wellbeing framework to support the wellbeing of pupils and staff at our school and empower them to learn to be responsible for their own mental health and wellbeing and be taught strategies to do this. We have a team of upper KS2 pupils who we have trained as wellbeing ambassadors who are working with us to train the school to know the ‘5 ways to wellbeing’ and take part in a challenge to earn wellbeing merits and the orange wellbeing star as they grow in their responsibility. These pupil leaders will help lead a mental health week in February focusing on each of the 5 ways of wellbeing daily and provide workshops for families to come in and join so that we can reach out to the wider community. Wellbeing has always been really important here and we teach it throughout our shine curriculum, but the new framework we have written focuses on key areas to progressively teach our children and support them to become independent and aware of their own mental health and wellbeing which is very important for now and the future. The staff wellbeing pupil team and the pupil leaders will work together to ensure this new framework is impactful and make a real difference to our AK family. 

Here is a link to our initial framework which we will be starting to roll out over the coming year and work through our action plan. By September 2024 it will be in all classes and we will then monitor it and ensure it is impactful and embedded within our Shine Curriculum.