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Mindfulness has been introduced into two local schools in a pilot scheme funded by a public private partnership.
Education Services has partnered with Standard Chartered to run mindfulness training at St Martin’s Primary School and La Mare de Carteret. The courses have been run by Nicky Jenkins and Chris Robilliard with the Paws.b course being offered to primary school age, the .b course for those in secondary school and the adult course to teachers.
Mindfulness focuses on being aware of what is happening around you and how it impacts on behaviour. Its popularity has grown as society increasingly focuses on mental health and wellbeing – currently one in four people in the UK will suffer from a mental health disorder with the first occurrence now happening in teenager years compared to ten years ago when the average age was 24.
Karen Hazzan, principal educational psychologist for Education Services said: "A mindful school would be a place where all in the school community are familiar with mindfulness and are encouraged and supported to develop and use the skills of mindfulness in day-to-day life at school and beyond.
"It began as a seed of an idea in 2013 and since then an ever-growing network of people have contributed to developing it into a project with tangible results through strategic planning, raising awareness and delivering sessions and courses. The schools who are participating have made a real commitment to making sure the project has the best possible chance of going well.
"Our hope is that by offering training to teachers and pupils alike that there is a real understanding of mindfulness at all levels within the school as that will have enormous benefits and will allow today’s learners to flourish in terms of well-being, academic work and preparedness for life."
For those who practice mindfulness, the research shows that it has beneficial effects on sensory awareness, cognitive control, emotion regulation, acceptance and attention regulation.
Courses have previously been run at a number of schools and at Education Services but the funding from Standard Chartered has enabled mindfulness to be offered to a larger group.
Jon Buckland, Education, Sport & Culture chief secretary said: "The mindfulness project has grown slower than we would have liked and there is constant pressure on budgets so the support from Standard Chartered has been invaluable and allowed us to do more than we could have done using our own financial resources."
At St Martin’s, 14 staff completed an eight week mindfulness training course which was positively received and followed the school running some mindfulness training with pupils. Now that the nine teachers and five learning support assistants have been trained, it is hoped to establish a whole school approach to mindfulness.
At La Mare de Carteret, 44 Year 6 pupils and 80 in Year 7 are currently undertaking mindfulness training and it has already had a positive response with children particularly enjoying learning about the brain and experiencing the benefits of relaxation. Staff at the High School have already undertaken an eight week course and it will be offered to those in the primary school.
Mrs Hazzan said: "From September, the school will have vertical tutor groups with a mix of ages and so the hope is that the current Year 6 and Year 7 pupils who will then be in Years 7 and 8 can support their fellow tutor group members to develop some mindful skills so that everyone can benefit."
The donation from Standard Chartered came about after the company offered mindfulness training to its team. Trevor Kelham, CEO of Standard Chartered Trust (Guernsey) Limited, had been made aware of mindfulness through a taster session his children had done at school and recognised there were benefits for a business.
Mr Kelham said: "The reality of a corporate world is that we are part of a global economy which is facing some enormous challenges. People are being asked to do more and more and the industry as a whole has a workforce which is increasingly tired, stressed, overworked and taking time off through sickness. I wanted to find a way of dealing with the negatives of day to day work."
