mental health & Orley

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools ‘School Mental Health Award’ – Silver Status for our wholeschool approach to the mental health and wellbeing of our pupils, staff and wider community.

The Mental Health in School Award was established in 2017 by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools – part of Leeds Beckett University – and social enterprise Minds Ahead. Schools are assessed against eight key criteria, with inspectors looking for examples of evidence-based approaches that align to the latest professional guidance surrounding mental health.

As a school, our focus, even prepandemic, was to ensure measures were in place to support pupil and staff mental health and wellbeing. The award has allowed us to focus strategically on what we had done previously and what more we needed to do as we worked towards gaining recognition. In completing the initial diagnostic, we could take stock and realise that while it may not have been explicit, the emphasis of school life is very much focused on developing and sustaining positive mental health and wellbeing.

Gaining the award has highlighted the comprehensive mental health and wellbeing provision we offer and the critical part it plays in our commitment to excellence in teaching and learning.

During Cool to be Kind Week pupils reached out into the community spreading kindness

4O created kindness vouchers for their parents who were keen to cash them in

Underpinned by growth mindset principles and character development, this highly regarded branch of psychology focuses on building pupils’ wellbeing and the skills that will enable them to flourish.

We strive to equip our whole school community with positive mental health strategies drawn from the research of the world-renowned psychologist Professor Martin Seligman and his PERMA model (extended to the PERMAH framework) of wellbeing.