This week’s case study focuses on the brilliant Bank View School. Based in Liverpool, the school serves students with complex learning difficulties, aged 4 to 19. We love partnering with them as part of the ‘Liverpool RISE Up’ programme.
Their fantastic PE Co-ordinator, Dan Burns, explains how they have implemented the programme to best suit their children’s needs:
Intent
‘We wanted to use the RISE Up programme to help our pupils regulate through physical activity.
Dysregulated nervous systems need movement to help young people regulate themselves, just like asthmatic children would need an inhaler. You’d never refuse a child an inhaler, so we shouldn’t refuse children the movement breaks so they can thrive.
Our pupils are often bussed in and could be travelling for up to an hour across the city so we wanted to use sports sanctuaries to either help calm them or energise them and wake them up after the bus journey, depending on each young person’s needs.
Implementation
Children come down at the start of the day, ideally students realise through using the zones of regulation that they need to go to the sports sanctuary. If not, staff nudge them towards going.
We make it really clear that it is not a punishment, the sanctuary is there to help and support young people. As a result, our relationships and the cues of safety are vital.
Children use the sports sanctuary when they need it. So if they’ve had an argument or something has upset them they can use it even if they don’t typically. Typically about 10% of our students use it per day.
We also have our sensory trails outside that children can use. We can be really flexible giving our children sensory breaks and opportunities for movement. Relationships and knowing our children is key to making these breaks effective.
In addition, we have introduced a lunchtime RISE Up club to give everyone a safe space to access movement in a structured way.
On Mondays children have Movement using Virtual Reality headsets, Tuesdays are Judo, Wednesdays are dance, on Thursdays children have dodgeball, and it is climbing on Fridays.
Impact
We frequently see children come in dysregulated but once they have followed the circuit, they are calmer and able to complete a full day’s learning.
We see a big difference when children don’t access the Sports Sanctuary if they need it.
We have one student who is really anxious, but the Sanctuary is fantastic to give him a successful start to the day and you can see his motivation build and the anxiety slip away after achieving a great start to the day.
A number of our LAC Children have benefitted massively from this approach and we have an EAL student who often turns up in a heightened state, we use the sports sanctuary to lower his bundle of energy and return him to the green zone of regulation.
In his case, we use proprioceptive stress buster strategies such as pulling a sandbag towards him, picking it up and taking it back.
Take up for our RISE Up Club by our young people has been brilliant, with children from right across the school attending. It is so nice to see some of our older pupils take on leadership roles by helping beeline the younger students and caring for them in a really nice way.
I completed an adapted version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Survey to evaluate my perceptions of student wellbeing for our priority group before and after setting up the sports sanctuary and RISE Up lunchtime clubs.
As you can see, outcomes have improved in every aspect.
The RISE Up programme has helped us improve outcomes for Attendance, Behaviour, Engagement, Mental Health, Personal development, SEND, Supporting our most vulnerable children and pupils who are dysregulated across a range of year groups.
I also completed the School Wellbeing Scorecard pre and post intervention. These are our results.
Pre:
Post:
We are delighted to improve in all areas and increase our overall score by 39% in under 6 months.
The programme has been great for helping us review what we do, and being explicit with children about why they are doing movement breaks. We feel like we have taken a big step forward in improving our wellbeing provision to support our brilliant young people.
Top Tips for Setting Up Sports Sanctuaries
I have two top tips for setting up a sports sanctuary. Firstly, it is to make sure it is accessible to every pupil who wants to use it. Secondly, if you see students who would benefit from it, build the relationship with that young person so you can nudge them towards using it.
What’s next?
We’ve got our Sports Day coming up which is a celebration of everything they have achieved this year and we will really focus on developing their pride in what they have achieved, building their self-confidence and helping develop that feeling of belonging and safety in our school.
We’ll do this through our flag parade, our children get opportunities to represent their form in sport and they love it as they rarely get opportunities to take part in sport outside of our school.’
Thank You Inspirational Teachers
At Future Action, we want to thank Dan Burns and the awesome team at Bank View who go above and beyond for their young people every single day.
We love partnering with them and many similar teachers across the country who show what can be possible in a post-lockdown education world.
We would also like to thank Sport England, Youth Sport Trust and Liverpool Virtual Schools, for funding the Liverpool RISE Up programme.
Do you want to improve your students' wellbeing?
Take the first steps here by completing our 'School Wellbeing Scorecard here.
This action will help you map your school's wellbeing provision in 3 minutes and identify the key areas to focus on for your setting.
You will receive a personalised report and a complimentary login to our taster ‘RISE Up’ course. Here you will be able to experience Steps 1 and 2 of our 9 Step RISE Up teacher training course.
Join our waiting list
We offer a range of services from courses, consultancy, keynote speaking and our book 'Time to RISE Up'.
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Have a brilliant week and thank you for all you do for your young people.
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