Wear Yellow on World Mental Health Day

This week, students and staff across the school showed awareness of their own self-care and demonstrated support for their friends, classmates and colleagues by wearing yellow items for World Mental Health Day.  First celebrated in 1992, this has become a global staple awareness day, highlighting the importance of mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma.

Our pastoral care programme, including a wide range of Personal Social Health Education (PSHE) and Guidance elements, in- and out-of-school counselling services & support, and wellbeing programme all contribute to this cause right across the year, but it was wonderful to see such commitment from everyone in school, demonstrating a core element of our school values in showing consideration for others, while also developing personal confidence in themselves.

Our Parents and Community Association (PCA) also showed their support by incorporating the theme into this week’s Movie Night, showing the celebrated Disney movie Inside Out, which is resoundingly seen as a very successful child-friendly cinematic approach to the topic of wellbeing, emotions and feelings and how children can successfully work with those.

Also, the Secondary English Department hosted a Poetry Slam in conjunction with World Mental Health Awareness Day. Slam poetry is a form of competitive spoken word poetry that combines performance, writing, and audience engagement. It often features personal, social, or political themes, allowing poets to express their experiences and emotions dynamically and powerfully. This event provided students with an opportunity to showcase their creativity and confidence while offering a valuable expressive outlet. Participants selected their own topics and composed original poems, which they performed in front of students from all year groups. The students demonstrated a commendable ability to convey significant themes through voice intonation and facial expressions. We extend our pride and commendation to the following students for their bravery in taking part in this Poetry Slam: Nina L M, Samyak K, Aomi O, Lorna S, Ashwina K, Eashan B and Mia T. The winners of the competition will be announced next week. 

Thank you to our whole community for being so positively committed to such an important cause!