At a recent parent consultation group meeting, the discussion focussed primarily on emotional well-being of our students, both at school and at home. Selective schools are familiar with the stresses young people put on themselves to achieve the highest grades and we as staff and parents encourage and challenge our young people to achieve their best. This is healthy and leads to happy students achieving phenomenal results but it can also have the opposite effect in some cases.  Students who start to fall behind or do not make expected levels of progress can feel the effects of failure and some are not able to call on resources of resilience to fight back.   

Learning is not linear and therefore it is expected and totally logical for students to lag behind for periods of time during their school career. Our students need to know that it is okay to feel a bit glum about school; that it is okay to feel a bit low from time to time and that this is completely normal.  The trick is to accept this as part of normal life and pull up their metaphorical socks and soldier on. It is easy to forget that some of our students are very hard on themselves and we at QEHS want to equip our students with the resilience and determination to overcome these many minor set backs that a typical student will encounter through their school career.

Emotional Intelligence

At QEHS we aim to develop a resilient community; a community that keeps calm and carries on.

To build that community we share an understanding of Emotional Intelligence which at QEHS is defined as the ability to:

  • acknowledge your own emotions and the emotions of others
  • understand other people’s emotions and act accordingly, at times helping other people to manage their emotions

As part of our school improvement plan we intend to focus on areas such as learning, behaviours and emotional well-being.  If you are able to offer any expertise in the field or just want to talk about emotional well-being please contact me and I will be more than happy to discuss this with you.

Mr N Allan