Leading Emotionally Healthy Secondary Schools

Course Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will have a strategic overview of how the Thrive Approach can support the social and emotional development of all students (and staff) in your school.

You will have a vision of how best to create the culture and environment that facilitate wellbeing and have identified the key members of your team who will become your Thrive leads. You will also have a bank of resources to use going forward to support you with the strategic leadership of Thrive in your school.

Who is it for?

This course is ideal for Heads, Assistant Heads, Deputy Heads, Governors and senior or middle leaders with responsibility for pastoral support, safeguarding, special educational needs and the SEMH curriculum.

The course is highly recommended for settings new to Thrive as well as those looking for further guidance on embedding the Approach as a whole-setting programme for wellbeing.

Please note: prices are for courses starting on or after 1 September 2025. For settings that would like to commission a face-to-face training session, there is a flat rate charge of £490 per trainer per day (or part thereof) plus VAT.

What you'll learn

During the virtual training sessions, you'll explore:

• The links between social and emotional development and maximising learning potential to raise standards of achievement
• The adolescent changes to the brain and body, and the impact of these on young people’s behaviour
• Appropriate expectations of behaviour at ‘right-time’ development stages and how to support the development of the key skills at each stage
• How Thrive-Online is used to screen, create action plans and monitor whole groups and individuals and how this information can be used effectively to inform practice
• The interpretation of Thrive-Online data to evidence progress and demonstrate the impact of the Thrive Approach for a range of audiences
• The impact of existing policies and procedures on the social and emotional development of students
• How to develop a whole-school, trauma-sensitive approach to supporting the social and emotional health of all students in your school

Course structure

The course is structured into four virtual training sessions, each three hours long:

• Session 1 – Getting started with Thrive at a strategic level; enabling discovery and sharing insight
• Session 2 – Supporting all staff to understand the developmental model; how to use Thrive-Online and what data analysis can be created
• Session 3 – Supporting all staff to understand rupture and repair in relationships and to use key relational skills; understanding how Thrive links to the graduated response; exploring models of implementation
• Session 4 – Being the source of real change – embedding Thrive across your school; developing provision and practice; resources to support you to embed Thrive