At The 3-18 Education Trust, we strive for all our students, families and staff to develop and achieve a profound sense of belonging within our schools, Trust and the wider communities.
Belonging is a fundamental human need that dates back to our earliest ancestors and influences our cognitive and emotional processes. In essence, belonging can be defined as the sense of connection experienced when surrounded by individuals who care for and support you. Being part of a community, family, or group is integral to cultivating this sense of belonging.
The feeling of belonging can be incredibly powerful and research shows that it has a significant impact on your quality of life. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs highlights the sense of belongingness as an essential need that motivates human behaviour.
If your sense of belonging is impacted, this can result in reduction in mental health, a lack of security/safety, reduction in cognitive processing and a withdrawal from situations impacting your attendance and outward behaviours.
At The 3-18 Education Trust, we have developed a Belonging framework support in a timely manner while also ensuring that students comprehend their personal responsibilities throughout their educational journey and broader life experiences.
Our Belonging framework outlines the five strands and how they might look with increasing need in each area.
We’ve worked with leaders across our schools to link what we believe to be the responsibilities for each stakeholder depending on the severity of need. Importantly, we’ve also detailed the responsibilities of the students themselves, as it’s crucial they see themselves as vital contributors to their journey. They deserve healthy challenges from us to help them become independent learners.
In our belonging for you section, you will be able to see more about each stakeholder including hearing from some of our parents and students on why they believe this framework will help them.
The areas of belonging outline the 5 strands and how to use the framework.
In an ideal world, all students would thrive at a universal level. This would mean that their needs could be met collaboratively with minimal intervention or additional support.
As minor concern emerge, we may class this as monitoring – meaning that our schools would be monitoring the concern and implementing minor adjustments of support to try and support the student to thrive.
If concerns persisted, we may need to take a more targeted approach and more specific interventions and support would need to be considered.
In more concerning cases, a more specialist approach is needed and within all strands, we can see the responsibilities we believe to be vital for each stakeholder once a student has reached this stage by clicking here.
Following this graduated approach, we hope to work collaboratively with families and the students themselves to help our students thrive and be the best they can be.
