News

Wellbeing has always been such an important focus area here at Nower Hill. Returning in September after the first lockdown, we ensured that this year it was a greater focus than ever. The whole school community have worked together over the past year to ensure that we continued to prioritise our students’ wellbeing. See below a snapshot of some of our highlights from the past year.

After the first lockdown we saw the benefits on how technology could be used positively to support students with their wellbeing. One of our first tasks was to launch our Wellbeing page, with a plethora of resources on a range of topics relevant to the needs of our students. We added “Help” resources to give support both in school and out of school. Our students have greatly benefited from this page, and throughout the year they have been central to the decisions we made on the new topics that we should add. We look forward to building on this success and further expanding this page over the course of next year.

We recruited our first set of Wellbeing Ambassadors from Year 7 to 10. Although this was disrupted by the bubbles and school closure, we were still able to meet with them over the course of the year and gain their voice and views. We were pleased to hear the many great things that we were already doing which they were grateful for, but more importantly they gave us suggestions to continue to do better. We were able to put much of this in place in the Summer Term. We look forward to recruiting a new set of Ambassadors in the new year.

Our Sixth Form Wellbeing Representatives have done such an amazing job this year. One of the first tasks they had was to record virtual assemblies for all year groups back in September. Throughout the year they have contributed their ideas on some of the different awareness days that we have celebrated. During the school closure in January, they put together tips to support with online learning that was shared. We want to thank them again for all their hard work this year, and wish them all the best for the future. We will be introducing our new reps in September.

During the school closure earlier this year, we launched our School Closure Support page, which was an add-on to our Wellbeing Page. This page was full of tips and advice to support students whilst working at home. Our prefects provided motivational quotes to help keep all of us going. On top of this, many of our Form Tutors used Weekly Check In forms to check in with pupils and give them the support that they needed.

In December, we launched our very first Nower Hill Advent Calendar. It was a pleasure to see our students and lots of our staff taking part in mini challenges on the lead up to Christmas, spreading joy and positivity. This will be back by popular demand.

Throughout the year, we celebrated many Awareness occasions. In October we celebrated World Mental Health Day, where our Sixth Form Reps put together some resources to discuss during registration. During Children’s Mental Health Week, we loved seeing our students expressing themselves in different ways. For Mental Health Week, we secured nearly 100 entries for our Year 7 Poster Competition. We will continue to promote and focus on these over the course of next year.

When students returned after the second school closure, we relaunched our Helping Hands poster to continue to remind our students of all the support that they can access at school. Our new poster will appear around the school and Form rooms from September.

The Daffon Wellbeing Hub, a safe and friendly environment, continues to flourish. We run multiple workshops for our students who are put forward by their Year Co-ordinator. This term we started drop in sessions for students to come in and talk about anything they like. Our School Counsellor, Ms Standish, continues to meet with students to support them. Our Medical Team, led by Sister Quinn and Mrs Maher, continue to be on hand to assist our students and be there if students ever need a chat. Our Student Wellbeing Co-ordinator, Mr Suthesh, works alongside staff and students to continue to promote Wellbeing across the school.

The staff mentioned above are currently putting together a video to promote all the support that is available for students here at Nower Hill. This will be shown to all year groups in September.

Wellbeing is such an important agenda and this is reflected in our Nower Hill community.  We look forward to building on the success of this year and continue to nurture and maintain our mental health and wellbeing across the school.