Page 10 - Athelstan Argus - December 2020

WELLBEING NEWS

BRADON FOREST SCHOOL
If you would like to seek
Assistant Headteacher, Paul Dipple, has been going from external support to help to
strength to strength with the staff wellbeing programme. He manage your wellbeing a great website
has introduced the ‘You’ve Been Mugged’ and Thank You is: www.educationsupport.org.uk.
Card schemes where staff are encouraged to make a cup of Education Support is a charity that focuses
tea or hand out cards as random acts of kindness for on supporting all staff who work in the
someone. There is also a schedule of LTEA breaks where education sector. The website has a
small groups of staff can get together for a tea and biscuit wealth of resources and a 24-hour
throughout the day, with a member of the leadership team helpline should you need
making the hot drinks. During every teaching day of December, someone to talk to.
Paul has been emailing out video clips for a Thank You Advent
Calendar, where various students thank staff around the school for their
help and support. This has been particularly well received!

MALMESBURY SCHOOL
A key objective this year is to review the wellbeing of all the school community and look at how we can
improve certain areas. A range of staff have joined the wellbeing working group that is looking at key
areas such as directed time/meetings, assessment and marking, CPD and work-life balance. We hope
to effect change through policy and whole school strategies. We will also be looking at the impact on
wellbeing of returning to work after leave of absence (for example for parental leave). Our starting point
was to develop a collaborative vision for wellbeing:
We recognise that whilst working in a school to support the achievements of young people is a
rewarding and enjoyable career, there are unique pressures to wellbeing that our roles can bring. We
want our staff to enjoy coming to work and being part of a supportive and flexible community. We
respect that day to day we all have different experiences and challenges that impact upon our
wellbeing. Staff are ultimately responsible for their own wellbeing but the school commits to creating a
culture, underpinned with policies and processes, that empowers individuals to focus on their
wellbeing. Staff should feel valued by leaders and other
members of their teams and should feel they have a
voice when decisions are made.
FLEXIBLE WORKING
SCHOOL BID

Malmesbury School in conjunction with the
Avon Teaching School Alliance has submitted a bid to become a Flexible Working Ambassador
School for the South West region. We are proud of the culture of flexible working that we already
exemplify. We understand that in order to recruit and retain the very best staff, a school needs
to be responsive and flexible to individual needs. From the very top of the leadership tree – our CEO/
Executive Headteacher works part-time - we exemplify flexible working practices. In 2019, the NFER
reported that 27 per cent of primary school teachers and only 19 per cent of secondary teachers
worked part-time; at Malmesbury School 50.4% of our teaching staff are employed part-
time. Similarly, school workforce data shows that the number of SLT positions being occupied by
anyone working part-time is only around 5%; at Malmesbury in 2019-20, 42.8% of our SLT worked
part-time.