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RGS named UK’s Independent School of the Year for Wellbeing


Reigate Grammar School’s ground-breaking wellbeing programme has been recognised as the best in the country at the Times Education Supplement Independent School of the Year 2019 awards ceremony. The school’s outstanding wellbeing initiatives were praised for their focus on raising awareness of the importance of mental health and for providing students with a ‘toolkit’ to help them take on the challenges and opportunities of the modern world.

 

Each year, the TES Awards celebrate the very best initiatives and programmes in place at independent schools across the country. RGS was shortlisted for an unprecedented four awards this year, the only school in the country to be nominated in so many categories. We fought off competition from an impressive line-up of top schools to become the Independent School of the Year for Wellbeing.

The judges were impressed by RGS’s whole-school approach to wellbeing for staff and students which is based upon a belief that happy and healthy children go on to become high achievers. Our focus on the ‘whole child’ certainly works, as we achieve some of the best exam results in the country.

The lead judge, Natasha Devon MBE (former Government Mental Health Supporter) said that RGS stood out as a “school which understands mental health as a universal issue”. She added: “They had embedded it into many aspects of school life rather than confining it to PHSCE or a ‘wellbeing week’. One parent said they had “never seen such positivity from any other school”.

Mr Fenton said: “Children need to feel valued and understood, secure amongst friends, looked after by adults and aware that older children are on their side – from that pastoral foundation we can light the touch paper to see success burst out like a firework in all areas of a child’s journey to young adulthood.”

The school’s success follows on from a recent Independent School Parent award recognising our outstanding community outreach which includes sharing of facilities, school partnership projects with the state sector, volunteering work and our impressive Changing Lives bursary programme that helps with social mobility.

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