A Worcestershire school has achieved a golden accolade for its outstanding mental health and well-being provision.

A gold standard School Mental Health Award, delivered by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools has been awarded to Malvern St James Girls’ School, and staff are in the mood to celebrate.

Malvern St James Girls’ School’s Headmistress, Olivera Raraty said: “I am extremely proud and delighted that our outstanding pastoral provision in support of positive mental health has been recognised in this way. Mental health programmes have come such a long way in schools in recent years and we are delighted to be at the forefront of this change working with the Carnegie Centre of Excellence. This award also recognises the excellent way that staff and pupils support each other day in, day out, to promote wellbeing.”

She added: “The wellbeing of our pupils and staff is at the forefront of everything that we do. The positive mental health programme has given us useful tools and helped raise even greater awareness of the importance of wellbeing amongst pupils and staff; this has changed the language and the way in which we respond as a community to individual needs. We can see that this approach has had a palpable effect on the positive emotional and mental wellbeing of pupils and staff, never more so than during these past few months as we supported one another during the pandemic. This could not have been more timely! This approach is rooted in everything we do and we are already building on this work in new and exciting ways.”

Malvern St James Girls’ School provides a wide range of activities to boost the wellbeing of pupils and staff, including offering Youth Mental Health First Aid training to a cross section of staff and Sixth Form, Wellbeing Champion and Wellbeing Ambassador peer support structures for staff and pupils, mindfulness, mental health and wellbeing lessons.

Using the Girls on Board Scheme, pupils are taught "how to engage in healthy, happy friendships as well as how to manage the ways in which these inevitably change over time. Once developed, these relationship skills will have lifelong relevance".

The school also ran a Virtual Festival of Wellbeing, hosting talks from speakers such as Steve Backshall, Helen Glover and Natasha Devon MBE. They have further initiated the Three Counties Wellbeing Collective in order to share best practice with pastoral leads from local schools and were proud to have their Pastoral Prefect produce a book for young people to learn about Mental Health issues.

The award was established in 2017 by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools – part of Leeds Beckett University – and social enterprise Minds Ahead.