Many happy returns

Gordonstoun is set on a beautiful 200-acre wooded campus

After a year which turned students’ world upside down, Gordonstoun recognised the need for a different ‘three R’s’: a return to campus, a reconnection with nature and a focus on rebuilding resilience.

The school, which famously educated HRH Prince Philip, as well as two further generations of the Royal Family, set about building a mental health recovery curriculum for its 600 pupils in the North East of Scotland.

Planning for students’ return began before term started with Houseparents developing a personalised plan for each student’s reintegration. Houses were reorganised and empty buildings were refurbished to create homely quarantine bubbles. Once back on campus, a return programme was built around the CHIME mental health recovery framework. This has been shown to help people recover from mental trauma by focusing on connectedness, hope and optimism about the future, identity, meaning in life and empowerment. At Gordonstoun, this translated into activities to rebuild friendships, adventures to look forward to, training senior students to be ‘wellbeing watchers’ and art therapy classes. It was all organised in a way which offered a gentle opportunity to get used to school life again.

Gordonstoun was built upon the idea that the best classrooms don’t have walls; its pioneering approach was the basis for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards, and inspiring the Outward Bound movement. This ethos is now more relevant than ever, as an already extensive outdoor programme was expanded to reconnect students with nature. Parachutes, gazebos and tipis were erected in the campus woodlands to provide new outdoor learning and social spaces, boarding houses were given personalised braziers for evening fires and a winter funfair took place on the lawn complete, with a colourful full-sized ferris wheel.

To help build resilience following months of

“I was excited, but also nervous about returning to campus because I hadn’t been with that many people for such a long time. I was glad we didn’t go straight back into lessons, we needed a bit of time just to rebuild our friendships and settle in. The extra time doing activities meant that we were ready to focus once the normal timetable began.”

Sailing is at the heart of Gordonstoun life, with many voyages taking place on the school’s training vessel, Ocean Spirit of Moray

Students taking part in a climbing expedition

PHOTOGRAPHY: GEORGE HILL containment, young people needed to be challenged – so the outdoor education team was quadrupled in size, Sunday rest days were dispensed in favour of coasteering, the local coastal cli s were rigged with ropes for abseiling adventures, and a pair of resident swans on the school’s ornamental lake found themselves rudely disturbed by groups of children learning how to paddle a canoe. Every pupil enjoyed several expeditions and a second yacht was chartered to operate alongside the school’s existing sail training vessel, Ocean Spirit of Moray. A er rigorous risk assessments and cleaning, Gordonstoun became the only school operating overnight sail-training voyages, the perfect antidote to the stresses of the past months.

Lockdown provided the opportunity for some teams within the school to work on new exciting initiatives. With scienti c research clearly linking diet with mental and physical performance, the refectory team developed a school menu to match student activities. Gordonstoun’s Phased Learning menu has nutrient-packed breakfasts to boost concentration and memory; a carb and protein bar on Wednesday and Saturday to deliver energy for sporting events; and brain-aiding Omega-3 and antioxidants during assessment periods. But most importantly, the new menu had to taste good, and students gave very honest feedback during regular tasting sessions! Given that a healthy diet is linked to better mental health, the new menu has helped overall wellbeing on campus.

You could say that Gordonstoun has lived up to its motto, Plus est en vous (there is more in you). It’s a school which believes that the character traits of resilience, compassion and self-awareness are key to success. Whether by crewing a yacht through a storm, setting o on an expedition with just a backpack, or by becoming a peer mentor in house, this is a school whose boarders develop skills and experiences which last a lifetime. It’s no wonder that it’s experiencing record admissions inquiries and that there’s not a spare bed in the school.

Students have enjoyed a wide variety of outdoor pursuits since their return to the school