Stoke Bishop Church of England Primary School

About the school's work

Essential Award 09 October 2024

Congratulations to Stoke Bishop Church of England Primary School on achieving the Bristol Healthy Schools Essential Award!

Highlights of the school's work:

• Regular staff, pastoral and SLT meetings are held to identify and respond to emerging issues around health and wellbeing in the school.
• The school ensures regular communication with the School Health Nurse.
• The school organises Coffee mornings and drop-in sessions focused on wellbeing focus (e.g. anxiety/SEND/sleep) for parents.
• A variety of interventions are run in the school to identify and support pupils at risk or/and already showing signs of poor health and wellbeing, such as Nordic Walking ,Future Stars sessions, Drawing & Talking therapy.
• SEMH interventions are run in class, such as Lego Therapy and friendship groups.
• Vulnerable groups are identified and included in School Council.
• Based on pupil feedback quieter spaces during lunchtime have been created.
• Pupils are consulted on ways to make physical activity (Daily Mile) more exciting and engaging.
• Regular staff and pupil wellbeing surveys are run in the school.
• The school has created a hub structure to support teaching staff.

The school is most proud of:

“The Student Council have worked particularly hard to find out how we can make the school a healthier place. They have conducted whole school well-being questionnaires and taken the data to explore themes where our school could be healthier.

They have presented this to the PTA and worked collaboratively on a MAGIC (Mindful, Active, Generous, Interested, Connected) project which has helped support the Healthy School Agenda.

With financial support from the PTA children have benefitted from a newly opened pond area, pre-SATS stress busting workshops, yoga sessions, visit to care homes, enhanced active and quiet break provision and equipment and a new picnic area.

The children have many more ideas that we plan to embed next year.”

As a result of working with the Bristol Healthy Schools Programme the school noticed:

“Working on the Healthy School Award has allowed us to celebrate the many ways in which our school is already a healthy place and also to identify areas of development.

As a result we have been able to embed more opportunities for the pupils. An example of this was the Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign which ran for 6 weeks and encouraged children to eat more veg.

Small groups of identified children from each age range were also given the opportunity to make healthy dishes with the each vegetable and share them with the school at lunch time.

The pond area is another excellent example. Through the Student Council many children identified that they would like a quieter area at lunch times. With the help of a parent volunteers and a group of Year 6 ‘pond helpers’ we now have a tranquil wildlife area for children to visit at lunch.

As a school we recognise that we still have areas of the healthy school agenda that need to be developed and we can’t wait to work on this next year!”

Well done Stoke Bishop Church of England Primary School, keep up the good work!