The early morning drive into school is starting to happen in something that doesn’t completely resemble winter darkness.  The first traces of bulbs planted are starting to pop their heads up around the school grounds as we anticipate explosions of colour decorating our beautiful campus.  We are one week away from half term and the first signs of spring give us hope of better times ahead.

This week has been officially designated ‘Children’s Mental Health Week, and every day of every week we are mindful of the mental health of the young people who we look after.   The theme for this year is ‘Express yourself’.  There are lots of great resources available at

https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/parents-and-carers/

In this week’s blog I thought I’d give you a little flavour of the types of things that we’ve doing to look after our young people’s mental health who come into school.

The importance of exercise is so important to help get the happy chemicals flowing and Mr Field has been providing a number of activities from badminton to football to fitness drills.  Mrs Godsell Wright has helped to provide some light relief with her dance classes in the dance studio – let’s do the time warp again and the macarena both popular.

At breaks and lunchtime, the hot chocolates have been popular, warming them up as our young people enjoyed sculpting the snow and having some playful snowball fights.

The importance of music was emphasised as Mr Grierson shared with the students ‘the top ten songs scientifically proven to make you happy – don’t stop him now cause he’s having a good time. Some of our talented musicians have been accessing our drum kit and guitars to give them a well-earned break from the computer screen.

Our pastoral team have been having one to one catch ups and staff and students have been boosting each other up with kind words of encouragement.

Since the last lockdown we’ve had a 500% increase in the number of children coming into school and this has made it increasingly challenging to deliver our remote learning and live lessons whilst keeping the school going, so if you’re a key worker and there is scope not to send your child into school some of the time, that would be greatly appreciated.

Have a great weekend, stay safe and look after each other.

Blog Guest writer Mr Grierson Deputy Headteacher