It was a Health and Wellbeing Learning Walk with Governors that brought home the impact of mindfulness throughout the school at Garnteg Primary School, just north of Pontypool in South Wales.
Seeing how pupils relate to one another and to staff, their levels of attention and concentration and their attitudes to learning, and their general behaviour, including some of our more vulnerable pupils still developing their self-regulation left a real impression on the Head and Assistant Head taking part.
This is the latest stage on a significant journey starting in 2017 and still growing. Over the next few years all staff completed an 8 session mindfulness course – some of them twice – and several have trained to teach mindfulness programmes such as The Present (for Nursery to Y2) and Paws b to pupils in Y4. In 2023-4 Y1 pupils have been following the MiSP dots programme and Y5 and Y6 pupils have been involved in a research project with the University of Derby trialling a version of mindfulness-based Compassionate Mind Training designed for this age group. So all pupils have several opportunities to experience a taught mindfulness programme as part of the curriculum, contributing to the Four Purposes and the Health and Wellbeing Area of Learning and Experience.
But the qualities observed on the Learning Walk have grown from a whole school approach explicitly seeking to embed mindfulness in the life of the school, building on the taught programmes and supporting pupils to apply the skills and practices on a regular basis.
In their planning for each term, teachers include explicit mindful activities into their weekly planning as well as incorporating mindfulness into their day. And now they have the mapping for each of the programmes to show how they support the detail of Curriculum for Wales they can relate other aspects of mindfulness to their specific topics.
This takes Garnteg Primary several steps along the MiSP Pathways model:
STEP 1: Exploring the Options
STEP 2: Staff 8 week courses
STEP 3: Introducing mindfulness options to pupils
STEP 4: Working with an external School Mindfulness Lead Support
And already working on some aspects of
STEP 5: Whole school approach – ongoing personal and teaching practice for Steps 1-4, exploring options for working with the wider community and other schools to look at ways mindfulness can support whole school culture, and working towards submitting a MiSP Pathways Portfolio to become a MiSP Beacon School or Setting;
a centre for good practice
In summary Steps 1,2 and 3 are well-established, Step 4 is in progress and Step 5 could be a next step.
You can hear more about Mindfulness at Garnteg here.