St Nicholas of Tolentine Catholic Primary School

Awards

Essential Award

About the school's work

Essential Award 19 January 2024 to 19 January 2027

St Nicholas of Tolentine Catholic Primary School have demonstrated commendable practice across a range of health and wellbeing topics.

The school employs a variety of strategies to identify and support students who may be at risk or already displaying signs of poor health and wellbeing, including:

  • forest nurture groups
  • mentoring
  • one-to-one music sessions
  • play therapy
  • art therapy,
  • SPARKS mentoring

After starting their work on the Healthy Schools award, the school developed a Wellbeing Squad (children’s group) who now work alongside the Senior Mental Health Lead. The school also invests in creating CPD opportunities for its staff including Thrive training, staff wellbeing training, and senior mental health leads training.

Among other initiatives to support staff mental wellbeing, they ensure that there is an open-door policy where staff can talk to SLT and regularly share mental health resources with staff and include these on the weekly memo.

They showcased their commitment to taking a cross-curricular approach to PSHE topics.

This included examples such as incorporating drama into English lessons to understand how characters feel, carefully selecting books that are representative of children and communities, and implementing science/STEAM workshops, among other strategies.

Well done St Nicholas of Tolentine Catholic Primary School, keep up the good work!