Board of Boarding Board of Life

I have always wanted to focus on the idea of resilience rather than purely on anxiety and mental health. This is why I was so interested in attending a course on AS Tracking and the idea that we can monitor pupils mental and emotional wellbeing, pick up on signals, set up sign posts and help pupils before any kind of mental health issue ever actually manifests. The ideas of what the course is saying is nothing new; it resolves around good pastoral care, pupils working with their tutors and Houseparents and good, clear, SMART action plans. The difference is that it offers early warning signs and the really helpful data is on pupils that often slip through the net until too late - the hyper vigilant pupil. Those pupils that care so much about everything that they overwork their hypocampus part of their brain, leading to burn out and ultimately an increased risk of mental health issues. The largest growth of mental health issues are in affluent teenage girls (those that are hyper vigi...

Headmasters and Headmistresses all over the Country are jumping onto The Pupil Voice Drive. The idea of pupil voice is core to the My School and my Boarding House as it allows pupils to take an active part in the decision making of the school. However, is this a good idea? Is it working? Does it help Pupils' education? and is it not actually just a way to make pupils argumentative and rebel against a system rather than help them to assist in the growth of a school. Thankfully, I have just gone through a week where pupil voice has worked brilliantly and where I can say that without a doubt, pupil voice (when done well) is a huge asset to any pupil and any school. On Monday, we hosted Wine Society in House. When two of the 6th form first approached me about this idea, I said that we could look at it but that they would need to get permission from the Head and would need to organise it themselves. On Monday, I saw the result of their efforts and I am proud to say that th...

A common issue in boys' boarding houses are boys that don't actually understand what it means to push themselves. They are so unfamiliar with pushing their academic boundaries that when the time comes to revise, a small amount extra seems like they are doing 'enough'. This goes alongside another issue, which is a pupil that is so worried about doing well they feel apprehensive to stop and worry about tasks like eating, sleeping and sport because it is 'wasting' revision time. For this particular blog, I am going to focus on the boys that are unfamiliar with doing enough work and need a real 'push' for them to understand. This issue is one reason why schools are increasingly putting mocks earlier as a kind of electric shock to the system. However, an early mock is also accompanied by a poor result soon being followed by a comment of 'well, I wasn't going to do well because they are so early and I haven't started working properly yet'. ...

Before anyone switches off, thinking this will be another rant about 'anxiety' and the facts about male mental health and suicides, please read on for a while and give this a chance.       The first thing I believe is that there is still room for the idea of 'manning up' (but not the term itself). The reason I say this is that if we are to build resilience, we need to know the difference between a boy that is crying over a bruised knee that they think is a fracture and the next boy that is suffering in silence as their own world and world view crumbles around them. I hate the term 'man up' (mainly because girls are usually much better at doing this and also because it is a massively outdated term) but the boy with the knee needs to get over it and the second boy, needs help. 3/4s of all suicides in the UK are male. This fact was discussed on the radio this week and it was suggested that this ratio is echoed throughout the developed world. The facts is...