樱花直播

Impact25th December 2023

A whole-school approach to mental health

Embedding mental health in the curriculum has been hugely influential in 樱花直播 Elvin’s journey from Special Measures to Outstanding in just six years.

樱花直播 Elvin Academy

When headteacher Rebecca Curtis joined 樱花直播 Elvin in 2017 the school was in special measures.

鈥淲e were the sink school in Brent. When you walked into the building, there were lots of reasons why children were misbehaving, the challenges they were facing growing up in an area of significant disadvantage and going to a failing school.”

Five years later, the school is rated Outstanding and is oversubscribed. Students are proud to come to school and there鈥檚 improvement in every measure. “I don鈥檛 think we could have improved the way we have without our focus on mental health. It鈥檚 made our progress deep, genuine and thorough. You鈥檙e not just superficially improving exam results, you鈥檙e building relationships and trust between children and adults, which allows them to grow and develop as human beings, not just pass exams.”

Through form time lessons, mental health has been embedded into the curriculum. 鈥淲e have built wellbeing, mindfulness and gratitude concepts into our day-to-day life. The curriculum introduces students to mindfulness approaches, zones of regulation, understanding the triggers for their stress and practicing asking for help. Having that as part of the daily curriculum means that adults and children are talking about mental health regularly and that normalises it.”