Student Well Being
For students, a culture of care is the essential bedrock of a conducive learning environment. Strategies employed by the school includes level-wide orientation programmes and inter-class activities to encourage bonding as well as regular Teacher-Student-Interaction time and Teacher-Student breakfast chats. Through such interactions and one-to-one conversations, teachers gain deeper insights and could better respond empathetically to the student’s social and emotional needs.
To support the well-being of students with special learning and behavioural needs, the Stage Model Intervention referral system - a structured system to guide teachers on the steps to refer students with additional needs for different types of support - was introduced. For students who show early signs of learning or behhavioural issues, the school provides targeted tiered support such as Learning Support Programme, Learning Support for Maths, or Reading Remediation Programme. For students where learning or behavioural issues continue to be a persistent difficulty, 1 to 1 withdrawal sessions or even withdrawal sessions or even referral to external professional agencies are explored. The school also embarked on a Social Skills and Peer Support Programme to enhance student capabilities in managing their personal competencies, as well as to assist to provide support in the regulation of their peers.
Student well-being in BGPS is overseen by the Student Development Team (SDT), which comprises of the School Leaders, the Head of Dept of CCE, the Year Heads and Asst Year Heads. In addition to catering to students’ well-being, the team also provide support and guidance to teachers in the respective levels, and also work closely with them in support of our children.
Under the physical well-being, the school looks into various aspects, such as student safety, proper nutrition, ensuring good physical health and also into the financial needs of the students.
Students physical well-being is catered for by ensuring student safety in school and also when experiential activities are conducted outside of school. The school also ensures that Proper nutrition is provided for the child. Hence the school ensures that the school cafeteria provides healthy food choices etc. And also, the school is also committed in ensuring that no child is left behind, especially students who more challenging financial background.
In terms of student safety, SLs and KPs constantly speak to the students about physical safety during morning and weekly assemblies, e.g. briefings on precautions for Dengue, Haze, Safety in school and Road Safety. Throughout the year, school staff are deployed to different areas to monitor safety of students when playing to minimise accident occurrence. Students underwent to the emergency evacuation exercise for crisis preparedness and attended assembly talk on road safety.
To ensure that our students have proper nutrition, our school also embarked on the Healthy Meals School Programme, where we ensure that all food served and sold in the school cafeteria is wholesome, healthy and balanced. In addition, breakfast and food is also provided for our students with financial difficulty, to ensure that they have proper nutrition to support their growth.
In terms of physical education, our school has many programmes to suit the needs of our students. Some to mention include the EMPOWER kids programme, where students who are above their weight recommendations have access to structured programmes to help them lead an active lifestyle.
We also have the Active Recess Programme, where physical activities are designed and made available for our students to engage in play and physical exercises to keep healthy.
In addition, we also have annual school-wide sports events such as the Kampung Olympics and lower primary games day where students, parents and staff are all encouraged to participate to lead an active lifestyle.
In terms of financial needs, students whose families face financial difficulties can apply for financial assistance. Upon approval, our students will be provided with materials (uniform, transport vouchers etc) to help them meet their basic needs. This allows them to have a peace of mind, and to be able to focus better in school rather than get distracted by financial issues faced at home.
Our FAS students are also given full subsidies for every enrichment programme to supplement out-of-pocket expenses.
Students’ cognitive development is catered for by ensuring that appropriate support programmes are in place for students with varying needs. For instance, we provide support to low progress learners, and at the same time, also provide programmes to stretch the higher progress students. Students who need additional help with curriculum work will be placed in appropriate support or remediation groups based on their differing learning needs (e.g., LSM/LSP, SDR, RRP).
In addition, we also provide authentic learning experiences for our students to generate greater interests and joy of learning, and to allow them to contextualise the knowledge they’ve learnt. Enrichment activities like our LLP - STRIVE@BGPS, aesthetics-related programmes and post-exam acitivities (PEAs) also help develop students’ intellectual abilities beyond the core curriculum. The school also ensures that the school environment is conducive for teaching and learning of all our students.
Students’ emotional well-being is catered for by ensuring that a culture of care is prevalent in the classroom and also at the school level. The school provides many platforms and resources for the building of culture of care.
Form Teachers play a central role in shaping the development of their young minds. ‘Strategies to Ensure More Attention to Individual Pupil Development through Primary School Life’ (SEAIP), which is intended to enable schools to strengthen the provision of pastoral care by creating strong and positive teacher-student relationships was introduced. This allows teachers to devote sufficient attention to their students’ development.
In BGPS, we believe that every child is a unique individual. To know our students better, we have face-to-face interaction with students regularly on either a group or one-to-one basis. Through in-depth knowledge of every student, we are able to identify students’ needs, nurture their character traits, dispositions and attitudes, support them in their learning and development, and guide them to make appropriate decisions.
Students’ development in the social domain, being able to manage relationships with peers and feel supported, is catered for through the teaching of relevant skills and values during FTGP and CCE lessons. Through CCE lessons and values education, students would also learn the right ways to manage emotion and uphold good values as well.
Lastly, the school also focuses on the holistic development of the child to ensure that their education in schools is not overly skewed towards the academic aspects, but also to focus on attaining joy in learning in both the academic and non-academic aspects and developing the right mentality / the life-long learning attitude to accompany their future lives.
Under SEAIP - Strategies to Ensure More Attention to Individual Pupil Development throughout Primary School Life, teachers now have more opportunities to give their students individual attention. Under the FTGP lessons, teachers can conduct interactive activities and lessons to talk about SE competencies. Teachers and students also have one-to-one student-teacher interaction time to surface and highlight social and emotional issues they have, and provide a check-in platform for students and teachers. In this way, timely intervention, and also advice can be given to the students.
In terms of managing themselves and their relationship with others, the school also has the CCE platforms (character and citizenship education) for students to learn about managing themselves and their relationship with peers, and a lot of resources to cue them into good social behaviour and skills.
Of course, outdoor education platforms are good opportunities to inculcate values and social-emotional competencies in our students. So we have the STRIVE programme, which we mentioned earlier on, and also level camps etc.
As part of the school’s emphasis on holistic development of all our students, and the system-wide shift away from over-emphasis from exams and grades to focusing on life-long learning and joy of learning, the school has done away with weighted examinations for P1 to P3 levels (and use bite-size, non-weighted formative assessment modes to determine level of readiness for students), and going forward, working towards extending to other selected levels.
The school takes great pride and effort in providing care and supporting the needs of our students. We are supported by a strong Student Development Team, whose members work closely with all staff and other stakeholders in supporting our students. We also provide timely support to students in dire and challenging issues (medical conditions, parent negligence etc), and would often conduct home visits, schedule extra coaching and visits to students in children homes and hospitals etc.
With our strong support system, and our strong collaboration and partnership with parents and various stakeholders, our school continues to work hard to look after our students’ well-being and to identify and support their needs to our best ability.