EMBEDDING WELLBEING IN THE WHOLE SCHOOL CULTURE
Mark Steed considers the importance of good mental health amongst staff and students and e plains how wellbeing has been embedded into the curriculum at ellett chool in ong ong.
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ellbeing has been working its way up the agenda in both education and business and industry over the past 20 years. In education, there is a growing recognition that there is little point sending A* students to top universities and on into the workplace if they are not going to cope with the wider challenges that they are going to face there. At the same time, the importance of wellbeing has begun to impact on business thinking beyond its traditional habitat of the HR Department. Over this time, the wider shift in the economy, from the industrial to the digital, has moved the conversation from ‘Health & Safety at work’ (the physical) to ‘Workplace Wellness’ (the mental).
The taboo of mental health
For many years, mental health has been a bit of a taboo. Slowly, society is beginning to grasp the scale of its mental health problem. According to research published in The Lancet in 2018, there were an estimated 970 million people globally with mental disorders of whom 264 million were affected by depression. It is generally agreed that the wor place is a significant contributory factor to issues relating to mental health – indeed the World Health rgani ation recently re classified ‘ urnout’ as a disease linked to chronic stress at work. Tragically, Hong Kong, where Kellett School is based, has one of the highest rates of teenage suicide in the world. Over 120 children and teenagers in the city killed themselves between 2006 and 2015 – accounting in some years for 30% of unnatural deaths for that age group. Great awareness of mental health issues means that rates are falling but each year there are still cases – indeed the educational community here is still reeling from a Year 11 student taking her own life the week before I write. Given the wider and local contexts, it is not difficult to see why ellett has placed a particular emphasis on Wellbeing education
‘Mental health has been a bit of a taboo’ which has become enshrined in our wholeschool programme, Positively Kellett.
Positively Kellett
Kellett School is part of the ‘Positive Education’ movement which is based on the research into the benefits of ‘ ositive Psychology’ developed by Professor Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. At Kellett, we follow a bespoke curriculum in which all students have one lesson a week to be explicitly taught the skills of Positive Psychology and the science of wellbeing. The aim of this is to foster the attitudes and habits that will enable them to cope with the stresses and strains of life and to thrive in the fast-changing world of the mid-C21. Furthermore, there is evidence that Positive Education delivers better educational outcomes for students.The areas covered include: a growth mindset, a healthy body, a healthy mind, effective communication, a positive sense of self, respectful relationships, and resilience. At Kellett, this approach is not limited to our students but also extends to our teaching and non-teaching staff. Winter 2021 | schoolmanagementplus.com | 9
