Developing Healthy Minds in Teenagers - Lucy Bailey

Currently recruiting schools to the project.

We are confident that enabling students to develop a healthy mind will lead to better grades in school and more rounded citizens out of and beyond school. The Education Endowment Foundation is keen to explore this with us and has provided a grant for a 4 year project. The project will involve 30 schools teaching a specific curriculum to one whole year group from year 7 through to year 10. Would you be keen to find out more and possibly involve schools in your academy group?

The curriculum has been developed in-with adolescent development, to meet the national requirement for Personal, Social, Health, Education (PSHE) and to be relevant to where students are now. We are delighted to be working with esteemed colleagues such as Professor John Coleman and Lord Layard on this project.

How to Thrive and the London School of Economics are jointly leading the project.

Full details of the project are available, but below is a summary of the main points schools are asked to consider.  

• A fully funded project that is being jointly led between How to Thrive and the London School of Economics.
• A 4 year research project - Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT)
• 30 schools in total - 15 will be picked at random to be treatment schools and 15 as control - the randomisation will happen in May 2013
• All schools will receive the same content/training/cover costs etc.
• Treatment schools will start to teach the curriculum from Sept 2013 and the control schools from Sept 2014.
• School will need to allocate 1 hour per week in the timetable from year 7 (cohort 2013 or 2014 if control) through to year 10.
• Schools do not have to make any changes to other cohort year groups. We just need to track one year group through this project.
• Schools will identify staff to attend the training. Training is a key element. A standard 5 form of entry school would need to think about a minimum of 4 staff for the training.
• Timetabling and releasing staff for the training will be the most difficult element. Cover costs are provided.
• All students from both treatment and control schools will complete a academic test and a health questionnaire in each year of the project. In the first year (2013) it will be twice - so that we can capture the baseline. In all subsequent years it will be in June.

If you would like to know more about how to get involved in the project or for an informal conversation please contact Lucy Bailey at lucy@howtothrive.org or call 01438 843876