WELLBEING POLICY
VISION
Expanding knowledge and understanding leads to wisdom
MISSION
PESS enables students to become self-motivated, competent, lifelong learners to generate creative ideas to do the right things for the growth of the society.
MOTTO
Learn Progress Lead
DEFINITION
Well-being is the experience of health, happiness, and prosperity. It includes having good mental health, high life satisfaction, a sense of meaning or purpose, and ability to manage stress. More generally, well-being is just feeling well.
Feelings of wellbeing are fundamental to the overall health of an individual, enabling them to successfully overcome difficulties and achieve what they want out of life. Past experiences, attitudes and outlook can all impact wellbeing as can physical or emotional trauma following specific incidents.
Purpose
We are committed to ensuring that we nurture a positive atmosphere for the entire Progressive English school community.
With regards to students in our care, we nurture their growth into healthy adults, by ensuring that they:
- be healthy
- stay safe
- enjoy and achieve
- make a positive contribution
- achieve economic and mental health well-being
Promoting a healthy lifestyle is integral to our curriculum, we recognize our role in ensuring students not only are physically fit and make healthy eating choices but they also take steps that enable them to experience mental well-being as well. As a school, we know that food is fundamental to the quality of a child’s life, not just in providing essential nutrition but in communicating and sharing positive values, attitudes and experiences with each other. And along with this, we are also cognizant of the fact that physical activity, sleep and learning to manage our time all contribute to a child’s overall mental well-being. Consequently, PESS does its utmost to teach students the key points about living a healthy life. It is only through a whole-school approach that the key messages about physical and mental health can be achieved. Adults should be good role models and support the students in understanding how balanced nutrition contributes to a person’s health, happiness and general well-being.
Objectives
This policy main aims and objectives are:
- To help students know and understand the importance of food and drink in a healthy lifestyle.
- To help students know and understand the importance of living an active lifestyle
- To help students know and understand how they can take steps to improve their overall mental wellbeing.
- To give students the skills they need to make the right choices.
- To give students the opportunity to experience success and the positive benefits of contributing to the school and wider community.
- To promote the physical and emotional well-being of all our students.
- To improve the health of students, staff and the whole school community by helping to influence eating habits through increasing knowledge and awareness of food issues, including what constitutes a healthy diet.
- To ensure a safe, hygienic, learning environment for students.
- To ensure that students refrain from bringing nuts, nut products and chocolate into school as part of their snacks/lunches.
- To outline the roles and responsibilities of key members of staff who work to promote living an all-around healthy lifestyle within our school community
LEADING WELLBEING
Head of Wellbeing-Principal
Guiding Counselor-
Anie Philip (GRADE 11 & GRADE 12)
Neera Raveendran (GRADE 6 - GRADE10)
Lakshmi Raman (GRADE 3 - GRADE 5)
Esther Praiseena (KG - GRADE 2)
STRATEGIES
The Curriculum
We regard healthy eating education as a whole-school issue, and we ensure that opportunities to teach the importance of living a healthy lifestyle occur throughout the curriculum. Healthy eating education is an important part of our school’s curriculum and the importance of balanced nutrition and healthy food choices are taught throughout the school. We also promote healthy eating through the informal curriculum. We encourage students to participate in school games and sports, and so learn the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
Our School Clinic
Our team of School Doctor and Nurse work to produce educational campaigns on a range of health related topics. These include campaigns on personal hygiene, germs, healthy eating, obesity, breast cancer awareness, etc. Our clinic staff conduct checks of eyes, weight and height and monitor the obesity percentages in each phase. Checks are also conducted for lice. In addition, our clinic staff ensure all students are up to date on the required vaccinations. Our clinic coordinates also with our School Counselor to identify students who show signs of concern ensuring counseling is offered to both students and their parents as needed. Our clinics also ensure teachers are made aware of students with any medical conditions. The implementation of all clinic and safety policies will be monitored systematically to ensure protocols for the enhanced well-being of our staff.
The School Environment
We ensure that our school environment promotes healthy eating. Students are encouraged to eat fruit as part of their daily break time. Primary Teachers conduct healthy lunch box checks and send home communication to parents in regards to any unhealthy items found within a student’s lunchbox. All students are encouraged to bring in a water bottle so they can have access to water throughout the day. Water dispensers are also provided in the school for additional access to drinking water. Chewing gum and fizzy drinks are not permitted on the school premises or while the students are representing the school. The school is aware of the possibility of food allergies within the school population, particularly nut allergies. Parents of students who are on special diets for medical or religious reasons, or who have allergies, are asked to provide as much information as possible about which foods are suitable or foods which must be avoided.
Our Welfare Team
Our team is on hand to provide counseling and intervention. If and when there is a concern about a student, a parent or any member of staff may fill out a Cause for Concern’ form and submit it to the School Counsellor, who will conduct an initial observation. After which, an observation report will be written up with recommendations for next steps. They are able to work with teachers to address behavioral concerns and write up behavior reports for teachers and students to follow as well as developing action plans for students referred to the Student Behavior Management Committee.
School Counselor Roles & Responsibilities:
- Open and maintain a file for any student referred to her. ● Conduct observations.
- Write up observation reports.
- Maintain a case log detailing reason for referral and details of each counseling session with next steps noted.
- Identify trends in the behavior that are a concern within the school.
- Raise awareness of the role of the school counselor within the school.
- Run the anti-bullying campaign within the school.
- Devise programs, policies, etc., to curb negative behavior and promote positive behavior.
- Place students on a behavioral report and conduct follow up with teachers to determine if a student has met his/her targets.
- Raise awareness of mental wellness among students and parents.
- Create student leadership opportunities in the form of training students to be mentors, playground buddies or helping students to take on a school community project or external volunteering proj
WAYS TO IMPROVE BOTH STUDENT AND TEACHER WELLBEING:
- Model Self-regulation.
- Teach About Strong Emotions.
- Gratitude Journals.
- Positive Time Out.
- Provide Student Voice.
- Give Students Choice.
Student’s wellbeing in PESS
- E-Learning Classes
- Interactive classes –we try to make live classes
- Short break to reduce strain on the eyes
- Number of classes are managed due to holy month of Ramadan
- Regular class assessment.
- Random inspection by principal and HM’s to monitor quality of education
Promoting Staff Wellbeing in Schools
- Create an Open-Door Policy. ...
- Encourage Teacher Work Life Balance. ...
- Show Them Their Value. ...
- Encourage Continuous Learning.
- The E-learning process is new for students and teachers. We have weekly sessions with teachers to evaluate performance and to devise improvement methods.
- Teacher ‘s feedback and assessment are collected during weekly sessions.
- IT supports the staff and management and educate to maintain the continuity of E sessions.
Monitoring and Review
The SLT in liaison with the Counselor, School Doctor and Head of Physical Education will monitor this policy to ensure that our students are taught the importance of living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It will be reviewed on a regular basis, and at least once every year.