Wycombe Abbey Recognised for Providing Outstanding Wellbeing Provision to Pupils
29 January 2025 - All
I am delighted to update the School community on our recent success in achieving the Wellbeing Award for Schools from the National Children’s Bureau and Optimus Education. This award recognises outstanding work to promote mental health and wellbeing within school communities across England.
At Wycombe Abbey we are committed to ensuring our culture is one in which a positive climate allows joy to ring loud and happiness to bloom. We equally recognise our responsibility and duty to ensure that the young people entrusted in our care leave School with the tools to face challenges with resilience and can step into their futures with excitement, a deep understanding of self and the bravery to seek support whenever needed.
Eager to learn, reflect and build on our provision we embarked on the three-year process of achieving the Wellbeing Award, the creation of which was based on the research of Professor Kathy Weare. The award asks schools to demonstrate how they work to promote social and emotional wellbeing and have robust procedures to support and respond well to mental health problems that those within our School community may experience. In short, the award asked us to show how we make and will continue to prioritise pupil wellbeing.
The framework for the award is based on solid research, and we had to provide a huge amount of evidence to show a journey of critical reflection, action planning and change for each of the eight key objectives.
Our assessment day at the end of last term involved our assessor speaking to pupils, staff and parents, and was a deep dive into our evidence.
Highlights from the assessor’s report include:
- Pupils felt very well-supported, particularly by their House staff and peers within their House Family.
- There is a strong sense of belonging, of self and self-confidence amongst pupils.
- Parents told me that their children felt safe, loved and well looked after and commented on the value of the House System.
- PSHE/Wellbeing education gave pupils information in an age and stage-appropriate manner, and parents echoed this too.
- There is a strong commitment to CPD around mental health and wellbeing, with plans in place for future development.
Our important work in this area will not stand still now that we have achieved the award. We will continue to reflect, develop and move forward with what we do and what we offer with regard to wellbeing and our mental health provision.
Mrs Sophie Blunt
Director of Safeguarding and Pupil Welfare
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