We were very interested in Offley Endowed Primary School’s (Hitchin) bid to train all their staff in a Resilience for Rewards program. As headteacher, Paul Edwards wrote:
“This is a 12 month commitment that begins with a whole school INSET and then becomes fabric of the school moving forward. It is intended that the impact of the programme will help sustain and promote learning at the school in all subjects and I am confident that it will help reduce stress, improve concentration in all lessons and lead to successful lessons, learners and outcomes. It will give the children many opportunities to be resilient, happy and make excellent progress. It will also engage teachers and support staff to be pro-active in their ability to teach the children techniques to put them in the optimal frame of mind to learn.
The training is just the start. I want it to be sustainable and also acknowledge that there are accountability systems built in for all school stakeholders. The programme will instil rituals and daily habits within my staff, creating significant upshift in results. Our Year 6 teacher trialled some of the techniques last year and I was particularly impressed how it helped our more vulnerable groups of children. It helped improve their self-esteem and the progress they made was exceptional. It also had a huge impact on the autistic children at my school to such an extent that I feel it a necessity to roll it out to the whole school.”
EdufundUK are particularly keen to fund teacher training for specific projects/skills as we feel this gives us the greatest longevity payback – benefitting all children and staff (through pyramid/in-school training) who the trained staff member has charge of for the rest of his/her career. The fact that the whole school will train together will help kickstart the initiative and consistency, mutual support and enthusiasm will massively benefit. Another strength of the bid was the positive experience from a trial of the techniques in last year’s Year 6 and the school’s commitment to pay the extra costs from its own training budget.