Thank you, Hannah, for reading and responding. These are great points and a great question. My team contacted School 21 to ask them your question. This is what they had to say:

“School 21 has developed a well-being curriculum, and devotes 3–4 hours per week to the well-being of each student. This takes the form of group coaching — usually in a 12 but sometimes working in a strong circle with all 75 students in the year group, and one-to-one coaching sessions. Each of our teachers are trained coaches, and so use coaching methods to enable students to explore their feelings and ‘wellness’. During group coaching, this happens through a core text in order to allow for distance between the students and issues. For example, in Year 7, our student studyWonder, a text about a boy with facial disfigurement going into school for the first time. The students explore his emotions of fear and isolation, and use these to discuss their own feelings about joining a new school. In one-to-one coaching, students are given the opportunity to talk about more personal issues.

Wellbeing language is weaved into all parts of the curriculum, and students are encouraged to develop a ‘stand’ (a true version of themselves) that they are committed to at all times. If students misbehave in lessons, or do anything to jeopardise their own learning and futures, they are asked to return to their stand, and consider whether they’re being true to it.

Additionally, rites of passage are really important to us, and we have a few key milestones that students go through (for example an five-minute, no notes, Ignite speech at the end of each year). These are all talked about and worked on during coaching time, and all students have to go through them.

In terms of physical health and exercise, these are of course very important to the school and so, as well as the normal PE lessons and lunchtime and afterschool activities, Friday afternoons are entirely devoted to ‘personal challenges’. This is a time when students work on a challenge (quite often fitness-related, but also could involve running an event for the local community, learning to cook cheaply and healthily etc.), and all students are involved in this. Activities change once every term.”

School 21 are very open to discussions about how they work so, I’m sure they would be glad to discuss this with you further if you wanted to get in touch with them.