Wellbeing

At Alexandra Park Primary School, we understand that it is essential to help protect and promote the emotional health and wellbeing of each and every member of our school community. We believe that all children are entitled to develop to their fullest potential academically, socially and emotionally and we are committed to ensuring that our school is a community where everybody feels able to thrive. 

Our values of Care, Aspire, Achieve are weaved into everything we do. They are continually referred to throughout the day and are fully embedded within our learning environment, and they are at the heart of every decision we make. This has a major impact on the wellbeing of our staff and children. We are dedicated to being inclusive in all aspects of school life in order to ensure that everyone feels valued, confident and happy. We prioritise building a culture of trust where everyone can be open about their health and wellbeing and know how to access support if they need it. Our staff team are supported to protect and improve their own emotional wellbeing and will be equipped to identify and respond to low levels of emotional wellbeing in young people, parents and carers and fellow staff members. We are committed to ensuring that all our stakeholders receive the right support at the right time enabling them to flourish. We want all children to leave Alexandra Park as confident, caring individuals who are ready to progress to the next stage of their learning.

Throughout their school journey, we aim to enable each child to grow in confidence and to be able to fully participate in school life and the wider community.  We aim to ensure that every child feels safe, happy and is ready to learn. We recognise that children learn at different rates and that there are many factors affecting achievement. We recognise that some children, at some points in their school career, may experience difficulties which affect their learning therefore we aim to provide a supportive school environment at all times and in every interaction with the children. We also aim to work with children and families to identify any difficulties early and provide effective interventions to support.

Care: Our children will be supported to learn to be emotionally intelligent and emotionally resilient, and will be equipped with the skills they need to grow and thrive. Children are encouraged to care for themselves and each other. Children will feel comfortable, safe and happy in the school environment. Our children will know when and where to go for support when faced with challenges and will be able to access support when it is needed.

Aspire: Children will be supported to be confident and resilient learners. We will create an environment where all children enjoy their learning, they are comfortable with being independent, asking for help, making mistakes and being set challenges.

Achieve: We will provide a safe and purposeful learning environment where all children are supported to achieve their very best. Our children will be supported to lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives doing things that they want to do and love doing.

We have implemented a tailored PSHE curriculum (SCARF) to ensure that we have progressive skills which enable our children to grow and achieve.  In order to ensure that every child has a voice and can express their feelings, classes hold  daily class forums, regular circle times and make use of worry boxes. Our PSHE lessons and Circle Times allow the children to become confident when talking about their feelings and concerns. We also recognise the importance of physical activity on wellbeing and have weekly PE lessons where physical health is actively promoted  as well as additional after school clubs.

In addition to our PSHE curriculum we have universal, targeted and individualised approaches for identified vulnerable pupils and families. We have created a bespoke provision map for wellbeing based on the principles of:

Prevention: creating a safe and calm environment where mental health problems are less likely, improving the mental health and well being of the whole school population, and equipping pupils to be resilient so that they can manage the normal stress of life effectively. This will include teaching pupils about mental wellbeing through the curriculum and reinforcing this teaching through school activities and ethos.

Identification: recognising emerging issues as early and accurately as possible. 

Early support: helping pupils to access evidence based early support and interventions.

Access to specialist support: working effectively with external agencies to provide swift access or referrals to specialist support and treatment. (See Provision Map for further details)

 

Other ways we support wellbeing

We promote a healthy diet. School dinners are tasty and nutritious, and we encourage children to bring in healthy snacks. The infant school children have a piece of fruit or vegetable-based snack each day. We drink plenty of water to keep ourselves hydrated as we know that  this is linked to better performance in the classroom and supports general wellbeing. In addition to our PE lessons, classes have the opportunity to have additional dance/ drama sessions with Sharp Arts and our Sports coaches provide additional learning opportunities. We are a Restorative school and our staff are trained in Restorative Approaches. We also use Zones of Regulation in order to support children with recognising and understanding a wide range of emotions and to support children with their emotional regulation.