Wellbeing

Through the 5 Ways to Wellbeing, we aim to empower our students and staff to understand and engage in their own wellbeing. We know that school, like life, can be stressful at times but with a few simple strategies to manage our wellbeing we can build the resilience that will allow us to thrive under pressure.

How do we focus on wellbeing?

Class teachers in primary and personal tutors in secondary will spend time exploring the 5 Ways to Wellbeing and helping students to build their own personal network of support. Our pastoral programmes are designed to meet the needs of individual students and specific groups of students.

This will be supported through a range of initiatives throughout the year, such as Wellbeing Week, workshops for students and parents, assemblies and activities with the class teacher or personal tutor.

Finally, we have a very successful peer listener programme where students receive training on how to become active listeners and mentor their younger peers.

How do we keep track of wellbeing?

At NAS Dubai we believe there is no substitute for good old-fashioned human interaction, and we work hard to form strong relationships and bonds of trust between all students and staff. This way we are always keeping our finger on the pulse of wellbeing.

We also use a range of internal and external surveys that allow us to carefully track and monitor levels of wellbeing across the school. Pastoral teams meet regularly to discuss this information and, if necessary, we adapt our pastoral programmes to meet the needs of different cohorts of students.

What support is available if a student is feeling anxious?

There is always somebody listening. Whether this is the primary class teacher, personal tutor, head of year or one of the three ‘go-to people’ that secondary students will identify in their Passport.

In addition to this we also have a team of trained counsellors in school, led by Mrs McSweeney. Students may be referred to Mrs McSweeney by a teacher, or they may approach her themselves if they want to reach out to somebody for a little support.

Finally, as mentioned above, we have a team of trained peer listeners amongst our student body. This is because we understand that sometimes students would prefer to talk to their peers, rather than a teacher.