Pupil Wellbeing and Character Strategy Through Positive Education Oval Learning Trust, NW Leicestershire

Oakthorpe Primary School, part of the Oval Learning Trust, partnered with Worth-it to develop a whole-school approach to wellbeing and character development. Faced with low pupil aspiration and engagement in a rurally isolated, ex-coal mining community, the school sought to build a sustainable, positive culture of wellbeing.

Over a multi-year project, Worth-it provided a combination of consultancy, training, and coaching, empowering staff to embed positive psychology principles into their daily practice in their schools. The project resulted in a significant increase in staff confidence, improved pupil engagement, and a shared language of positivity that extended to parents and the wider community, all while working within the constraints of limited resources and time.

Schools Involved:

• Oakthorpe Primary School (Lead School)
• Albert Village Primary School
• Viscount Beaumont Primary School
• Swannington CofE Primary School

About the MAT Partnership

Oakthorpe Primary School, a small rural school in North West Leicestershire and part of the Oval Learning Trust, has long prioritised developing pupils' character and resilience. Led by Headteacher Keith Ellis, the school recognised that to truly raise standards, they needed a robust approach to mental health and wellbeing for pupils, staff, and families.

This led to a project aimed at supporting and promoting positive mental and emotional health for primary school children and their families. The school, along with its funding partner Leicestershire County Council, the project was awarded the Shires grant to purchase a support and training package from Worth-it. This enabled their staff from the 4 schools to apply and embed skills and strategies to improve the wellbeing, character and resilience of vulnerable children.

The goal was to implement targeted interventions and foster a whole-school culture that promotes mental health, ultimately preventing more severe problems in the rural localities of North West Leicestershire and embedding a robust approach to mental health and wellbeing for pupils, staff, and families.

A key outcome was the development of a wellbeing toolkit for local schools, featuring case studies and proven strategies to support wellbeing, character and resilience. The project ran from October 2016 and provided consultancy, training and coaching for the schools.

In June 2017, a celebration day showcased the wellbeing toolkit, attended by students, parents, and other partner organisations. The project aimed to cultivate a positive mindset across the whole school community.

The Challenge

The Trust faced several interconnected challenges rooted in its community context:

• Low Aspiration and Engagement: Pupils in the ex-coal mining community often experienced low aspiration, social isolation, and disadvantage. This negatively impacted their engagement with learning, their overall achievement, and their wellbeing and resilience.
• Lack of Staff Capacity and Capability: While staff were dedicated, they needed a deeper understanding of character development, resilience and wellbeing to effectively support pupils. The school needed to build this capacity internally to ensure any approach was sustainable.
• Limited Resources: As small rural schools, both finances and staff time were limited. Any solution needed to be cost-effective and integrated into existing practices rather than being a time-consuming add-on.

As Keith Ellis Headteacher explains, the school knew they were hitting the limits of their internal knowledge.

"We were talking to the children about 'be positive, be positive' but not giving them the skills and the language to talk about that... You can very easily get to the limits of your understanding... it’s recognising when you know there's more to it than what you're thinking."

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The Solution

Worth-it worked in close partnership with Oakthorpe Primary and the Oval Learning Trust to design and deliver a multi-faceted programme grounded in positive education (Waters, Sun, Rusk, et al.,2017). The project aimed to create a sustainable culture of wellbeing by upskilling staff and embedding practical, evidence-based strategies into the fabric of the school. The core of the solution was "not a ‘this is the solution’" approach, but one of collaborative consultancy that helped the schools

"unpick the issues that we feel are there and then using the toolkit and the conversations that have come from that that have helped us to solve the problems for ourselves."

Project Timeline and Activities

October 2016: Project Kick-off

• Our Input: Consultancy
• Activity: Worth-it provided initial consultancy to Oakthorpe Primary, helping to establish the project's overall aims and objectives for the 'Oval Character and Wellbeing Project'.

November 2016: Programme Launch

• Our Input: Consultancy, Training and Pupil Voice Evaluations
• Activity: A launch event was held for the four Trust schools. Worth-it delivered a presentation and facilitated a workshop where staff and pupils conducted an initial school wellbeing audit.

December 2016: Staff Training and Coaching

• Our Input: Training and Coaching
• Activity: Worth-it delivered a full-day training session for staff from all four schools, providing practical strategies for promoting children's emotional health based on positive psychology principles. This was followed by a series of coaching sessions to help schools create and implement action plans.

September 2017: Refresher and Strategic Planning

• Our Input: Training
• Activity: A refresher workshop was provided for senior leaders across the Trust, focusing on building sustainable and strategic cultures of wellbeing.

October 2017: Parent Engagement

• Our Input: Training
• Activity: Worth-it delivered a workshop for parents from across the Trust, offering practical ideas to help build child and family wellbeing together at home.

2017-2019: Ongoing Evaluation

• Our Input: Evaluation
• Activity: Worth-it provided ongoing pupil wellbeing evaluations to help Oakthorpe review and evolve its approach, ensuring strategies remained relevant and impactful.

The Results

The project successfully embedded a culture of positive mental health across the Trust, leading to significant and lasting change for staff, pupils, and the wider community.

• A Shared Language of Positivity: The school successfully embedded the 'Ideal Selves' model (Boyatzis & Akrivou, 2006), helping pupils and staff focus on their strengths and aspirations. This became a cornerstone of school life, from classroom displays to performance management. Keith Ellis states, "The biggest impact has been focusing on the ideal self across the school. With children, with teachers, with parents, with all staff."
• Improved Staff Wellbeing and Confidence: The focus on character strengths transformed staff development. By understanding and leveraging their own strengths, teachers felt more confident and capable, which had a direct impact on their pupils.
• Enhanced Pupil Engagement and Resilience: The project gave pupils the vocabulary to understand and articulate their emotions and learning processes. This was embedded across the curriculum, using strategies like the ten positive emotions identified by Fredrickson (2001) to build resilience and improve learning. The school saw a marked improvement in pupils' stickability and ability to learn from mistakes.
• Stronger Community and Family Links: By "relentlessly talking about positivity," the school successfully engaged parents. During parents' evenings, families would add to their children's 'Ideal Selves and Character Strengths' displays, and they began using positive psychology concepts like gratitude boxes and strengths spotting at home.

Keith Ellis summarises the importance of this work: "If you’re not engaging in conversations within your school, looking at mental health and wellbeing then you’re not going to get the learning outcomes for all children... Ignore it at your peril."

Conclusion

The partnership between the Oval Learning Trust and Worth-it demonstrates that a strategic, long-term investment in wellbeing is not a distraction from academic outcomes—it is the key to unlocking them. By empowering staff with coaching and evidence-based tools, the schools were able to create a self-sustaining, positive culture. The project proves that even with limited resources, a whole-school approach can build the resilience, character, confidence, and aspiration needed for pupils and staff to thrive.

As Keith Ellis advises other school leaders,

"Don’t think that you’re going to do this and see the impacts straight away... but you hope that you know that these children are going to get a better chance in life because of the work that you’ve done."

For more information on the approach used by Oakthorpe and Oval Learning Trust, see the published research by Ellis and Robson-Kelly, 2018.

Our Consultancy and Training Support

Through our Wellbeing Club programme, we aim to equip schools with the knowledge, tools and community support needed to create positive change. Our comprehensive training includes modules on evidence-based frameworks such as Positive Education and SEARCH, which have shown to effectively improve student mental health and wellbeing.

We understand that time constraints can be a challenge for schools. That's why we offer flexible training options, including both online and face-to-face courses. We also provide ongoing CPD opportunities to ensure that mental health leads stay updated on best practices and can continue making a positive impact in their school communities.

Collaboration with school leadership is crucial in creating a successful whole-school approach to pupil wellbeing. Our programmme encourages this collaboration and offers strategies

References

• Boyatzis, R., & Akrivou, K. (2006). The ideal self as the driver of intentional change. Journal of Management Development, 25(7), pp. 624-642.
• Robson-Kelly, L., & Ellis, K. (2018). Enhancing learning through Positive Education, wellbeing and resilience. Impact, the journal of the Chartered College of Teaching. 1. Online.
• Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden and build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.
• Waters L, Sun J, Rusk R, et al. (2017) Positive Education: Visible wellbeing and the five domains of positive functioning. In: Slade M, Oades L, and Jarden A (eds) Wellbeing, recovery and mental health. Cambridge University Press, pp. 245–264.