Life Education Wessex launches SCARF aimed at improving children’s health, wellbeing and achievement

Coram Life Education (CLE), the largest provider of wellbeing and drug education in schools, has developed a new range of education support tools to help schools meet Ofsted requirements for safety, personal development, behaviour and welfare. Through Life Education Wessex, a delivery partner of CLE, these resources are available to schools in Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Hampshire.

Called SCARF: 'Safety', 'Caring', 'Achievement', 'Resilience' and 'Friendship', the tools are aligned to the National Curriculum, providing a whole scheme of work to help busy teachers. Easy to access, and tailored to meet schools’ individual needs, these comprehensive online resources include lesson plans, activity sheets, film clips, songs, games, and teaching and learning materials.

SCARF is available as part of Life Education Wessex’s programme of wellbeing and drug education which takes place in mobile classrooms at schools throughout Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Hampshire, helping children to make healthy choices. Booking our mobile classroom visit gives teachers this fantastic online resource at no extra cost. A subscription to SCARF includes comprehensive, tailored resources and planning tools devised by professionals from the field, and features Coram Life Education’s much-loved puppet giraffe, Healthy Harold and his friends.

This term the Life Education Wessex mobile classroom visited Pinhoe C of E Primary School in Exeter. This was the first Life Education experience for the vast majority of the current pupils at Pinhoe, all of whom were extremely enthusiastic during their sessions, sharing many fabulous ideas about keeping healthy and safe. Head teacher, Sian Lane, said, "Our visit from Life Education fitted brilliantly with our whole school focus upon child and adult mental health and well-being, AWARE. The children loved Harold, the giraffe puppet, and staff were really inspired by the new SCARF programme. The response from parents has been extremely positive too!"

SCARF was inspired by the work of the staff and pupils at the highly successful Allerton Primary and Nursery school in Bradford, West Yorkshire, underpinning a values-based approach to all aspects of school life. At Allerton it has helped to create a warm, welcoming and supportive environment in which children enjoy working and learning together, feel safe and secure, and have high levels of achievement.

Helen Morrall of Life Education Wessex said, “Evidence shows that a strong sense of wellbeing is linked to good outcomes in children’s health and educational achievement. This is why Coram Life Education’s work is so critical and also why it is so popular, with one in eight primary schools in the country – that’s 675,000 children – enjoying memorable and engaging ‘life skills’ lessons delivered by our skilled educators. Not only does SCARF help schools meet Ofsted requirements, it also enables school leaders and teachers to develop Personal Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) policy and integrate existing Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC) expectations into whole school planning.”

For further information about SCARF please visit http://www.coramlifeeducation.org.uk/

If your school is interested in a Life Education Wessex session please contact 01258 837417
schools@lifeeducationwessex.org.uk