Belonging & Personal Development

Belonging

We see first-hand how positive mental health and wellbeing, along with a sense of feeling valued and belonging, fosters a growth mindset and enhances academic attainment. To us, this is the foundation for learning. Belonging at Embley doesn’t simply mean fitting in and being like everyone else, rather being accepted and respected for who we are.

The quality of our relationships - peer-to-peer, student-to-teacher, colleague-to-colleague - underpin this belonging and it is what creates such a special community at Embley. This is how our students grow their sense of wellbeing, develop positive social behaviour, achieve academically, and ultimately make a successful transition into adulthood.   
 
Helping navigate through the teenage years and enabling students to have the understanding and life skills to make informed decisions, is our exceptional Pastoral team who are focused on ensuring the happiness, wellbeing and safety of every child. The team includes our Heads of Year, tutors, Boarding House parents and tutors, matrons and Kate, our school counsellor.  
  
PSHE lessons take place in our Wellbeing Hub and our guest speaker programme cover issues such as relationships, consent, mental health and emotional wellbeing, personal values, discrimination, identity, personal finance, careers, online safety, social media, alcohol, vaping and drug education.

For parents, we run workshops offering guidance and ideas about how parents can support their children at home.

We share exclusive access to a specialist online portal with our parents, students and staff. This is a professionally endorsed resource that has been developed by child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing expert, Alicia Drummond. It’s an online platform that has been designed to help parents understand and meet their child’s social and emotional needs as they grow up.

Personal Development & Careers

Our continuous personal development programme helps students better understand themselves, giving them the confidence, self-awareness and knowledge about the endless doors that are open in their futures and empowers them to make informed choices about their lives ahead.

Sitting alongside academic achievement, we help equip students with the knowledge and skills that are highly valued in work and society. While aspirations will be vastly different for every student, our pupil profile includes 10 core attributes that every Embley student should aim to be before they leave school:

• Authentic
• Knowledgeable
• Principled
• Reflective
• Humble
• Compassionate
• Open-minded individuals who are risk takers, thinkers and collaborators.

Across the Senior School, students take part in a programme of personal development activities with their tutors and our careers advisor during our dedicated Future Fridays sessions, tutor time and PSHE lessons to nurture and refine these personal attributes. In Years 7 and 8, our focus is on helping students to understand more about themselves and aspirations for when they leave school. In Year 9 these discussions evolve to how these ambitions influence GCSE choices. In Year 10 and 11, students are given the opportunity to participate in career-focused workshops and have a one-to-one conversation with our careers advisor about work experience in Year 10 and 12, A Level choices and higher education options.