Upperthong JI School Staff Well Being Offer
Upperthong Staff Well Being Offer
Good staff wellbeing is essential for cultivating a mentally healthy school, for retaining and motivating staff and for promoting pupil wellbeing and attainment.
Wellbeing is all about our holistic health, including the physical and emotional. When we have good levels of wellbeing we feel that life is in balance and that we can generally cope well. We feel motivated and engaged, we’re resilient and able to deal effectively with daily troubles, as well as ’bounce back’ from life’s challenges.
We recognise that our staff juggle a multitude of different tasks and demands, therefore we believe it is important that everyone is given the right emotional and practical support so that they can, in turn, support their pupils.
We are committed to ensuring staff wellbeing is strong as, in addition to having a positive impact on colleagues and pupils, good staff wellbeing can improve performance and job satisfaction, which can lead to reduced staff turnover. It can also help to reduce absence (both short and long term), increase productivity and promote staff engagement.
In order to ensure excellent staff wellbeing, we commit to the following:
- No intense lesson observations or book scrutinies
- Encouraging staff to set their own timetables and make decisions on classroom management and organisation which work for them
- Outside of directed time, enabling staff to set their own working pattern; making judgements on how much time is spent in school.
- SLT encouraging a belief that as long as work is completed, outcomes for the children are strong and the learning environment is tidy there is no judgement on the time staff arrive or leave.
- Staff meetings capped at 75 minutes weekly and never held when Parents’ Evenings or other whole school events occur
- Allocation of TAs planned in detail in order to ensure a fair system of general support whilst meeting the needs of the children with SEND. This means that within the tight budget parameters staff should feel supported.
- Reallocating support staff when SEND children are absent to give additional support
- Head and deputy always available to support with challenging behaviour
- Support and understanding when staff have compassionate/medical/family needs.
- Full support for staff from headteacher when dealing with unreasonable complaints
- No expectation to provide extra work for children whose parents remove them from school for holidays.
- Places provided in school for PPA/meetings if needed.
- PPA at home if required.
- Commitment to ensuring staff are able to have a break at lunchtime with no expectation of behaviour management/ other support.
- Headteacher open door so support is available when needed
- Buying into CareFirst so staff have access to mental health and well-being support as well as physical health support
- Objective led not target driven appraisal
- No expected planning format; staff encouraged to use commercially produced schemes of work along with resources to cut down on planning time
- Only 3 data collection points each year
- Feedback rather than marking policy with strategies to reduce marking work load
- Staff are free to choose classroom layout which works for individuals and their children
- No restrictive display policy; the only expectation is that displays in the classroom and outside should reflect current work/themes/ knowledge
- Understanding that there is no one way of teaching to promote learning; staff free to choose their own style which meets their and children’s needs
- Buffer leadership; HT acting as a buffer between LA, DfE, Ofsted, parents etc to limit staff stress
- Written element of end of year reports less than 1 page of A4
- Opportunities for staff progression/CPD-eg NPQs, SLT shadowing, interviewing,