Hethersett Academy Case Study: The impact of wellbeing pathways

Hethersett Academy, is a coeducational secondary school located in a village, just outside of the city of Norwich in Norfolk, UK.

Rated 'Outstanding' by Ofsted, its students consistently achieve excellent GCSE results, earning it a reputation for academic excellence. Part of the reason for its success, however, is its holistic approach. Its vision to ensure every student feels they belong and focus on pastoral care.

Head of PE, Nick Austin (in the centre of the team photo above), talks us through the journey they have been on to transform the life chances of their young people through an innovative partnership with Future Action and creating a Key Stage 4 Wellbeing pathway in PE.  Five brilliant students also share comments, describing the impact the programme has had on them.

Intent 

Nick explains:

"Students opting for the health and wellbeing route in PE report higher levels of low confidence, stress and anxiety, negative feelings from social media, lower mental health, lower body confidence and lower self-kindness demonstrating a need to cater for these students in PE. 

We wanted to empower them with a toolbox of self-care strategies to encourage good mental wellbeing now and long after they have left us.

Therefore we developed a health and wellbeing pathway as 1 of 4 that our young people could choose from at the start of each academic year from Year 9 onwards.  The aim is that young people will get meaningful PE based on what they want to get from the subject whether that is improved health and wellbeing, develop technical skills in physical education, or develop their leadership skills etc."

Our original case study explains the original design process in more detail.  You can read it on the Future Action website.

Implementation

Content has been delivered in the same way with the Mental Fitness Pyramid taught in year 9 for 1 weekly 60 minute lesson. In year 10 the focus is on Healthy habits and accessing the 4 happiness chemicals.  Both years focus on teaching the link between physical activity and mental wellbeing.  All lessons are predominantly practical.

In addition, the PE team have accessed the Trauma Informed PE course and this has helped with awareness in how we talk to students from these groups.  It coincided with some whole school trauma informed continuous professional development (CPD), and was especially useful with our English as an additional language (EAL) students. 

Impact

In January 2023 we reviewed our new models based (lower school) and personality pathway (upper school) PE curriculum with a specific focus on the impact that the RISE Up programme had on our students. This followed staff working with Future Action CPD for both the RISE Up course and Trauma Informed PE and implementing in years 10 and 11.  

One year on and we are now able to track and re-evaluate our progress through this review, which comes as part of a larger trust review of the PE curriculum.  We found that:

• The number of students reporting an enjoyment of lessons has increased from 69% to 83%
• The number of students improving their overall wellbeing through taking part in PE has increased from 26% in 2023 to 51% in 2024

We completed the School Wellbeing Scorecard to measure the progress we had made with our provision.

Before the Health and Wellbeing pathway was introduced:

Current provision:

This led to an increase of 29% from an above average starting point.

Student Panel feedback on impact of our programme:

In January 2023, we created a case study on how the Hethersett programme had benefitted one of our students and her mum. The blog is, again, on the Future Action website.

This time we wanted to hear more student voices about how the programme had impacted them and their wellbeing.

We sat down with 5 awesome students, 2 from Year 9 and 3 from Year 10 to find out their thoughts about the programme in PE.

Izzy 

"We really liked having the choice.  It’s less judgmental being around like minded students who want to get the same outcomes from their PE lessons.   

I enjoy the social aspect and like being physically active in a more enjoyable way.  I felt safer, the atmosphere is really nice.

I especially liked yoga and found that when I was stressed outside of PE, I would do some meditation to help calm me."

Amelia

"I found the communication skills really useful for mixing more with other students who weren’t my close friends.  It has given me more confidence and helped me make new friends.  It has helped with my feeling of belonging within the school. 

We have a wide range of clubs to help us."

Sofia 

"I found PE overwhelming before so it was nice to pick a pathway where I felt more comfortable in.  I always feel included and like all of the activities.

I especially enjoyed social badminton where we would rally and then ask each other questions about our wellbeing based on questions on the whiteboard. We rotate round between playing and chatting to your friends about the answers.

The atmosphere in the classroom transfers to your personal emotions and views on the teachers.  That’s what makes our PE and Geography teachers so approachable."

Isabella 

"It has been great to combine movement with friendship.  PE teachers spend more social time with us and are chatty and friendly.  We still learn lots of things but it creates an atmosphere of trust."   

Eve  

"The wellbeing pathway helped with my engagement in PE, it took away the intimidation factor so I could engage in the activities and helped me feel better mentally.  

Our teachers are very nice. Students in our group go to our PE teachers when we are having problems outside of PE. 

We had a friendship issue as a group, we managed to come together and use the worries as a positive technique to solve the problem together."

From the comments, we are pleased that students are seeing the benefits of the programme and feel safe in PE with great relationships with their teachers. It is great that we are able to contribute to the excellent wider mental health provision in the academy brilliantly led by Claire Tilbury.

The Norfolk RISE Up programme has helped us improve engagement, mental health and the personal development of our young people and fitted perfectly into what we were wanting to build with the personality pathways to create great outcomes for our young people.

What's next? 

Moving forward, we will have:

• Further staff CPD/meeting time to refine delivery.
• A weekly or half termly focus on each of the above areas.
• Develop student feedback to see how we can further enhance the programme to benefit all of our young people.
• We are also looking forward to seeing our students take part in the Norfolk CC RISE Up celebration event this summer.