Children in Pupil Referral Units across the UK are struggling with emotional challenges. We recognise that there are three key needs, which if resolved, would make a significant difference not just to pupils, but those they interact with in mainstream school, their families and those who teach them. The needs we intend to meet are: Low self esteem, difficulty controlling behaviour and poor attendance. There are also other needs that schools may need to address and this will depend on the pupils family circumstances, location and culture.

We know from experience that pupils who focus on the development of their emotional intelligence, to become more mindful of others and to see things from perspectives outside of their own, develop a better attitude to learning and remain engaged with longer term education. This will lead to us cultivating better citizens in the community and better economic outcomes in the local area.

We believe that in conjunction to providing our services in PRUs, providing training to mainstream schools will minimise the likelihood of pupils returning to the PRU and also minimise the the number of other pupils in schools needing to attend a PRU as the mainstream staff will be better equipped to deal with them.

Pupils are more likely to succeed with a multi-pronged approach. This means delivering training for pupils and the influencers in their lives (parents and teachers) so that their progress can be supported outside of any workshops or sessions they attend. Using games and activities, we teach pupils skills that challenge them to create ways to respond to situations that would have in the past, evoked a negative emotion such as anger.

Our techniques are based around attitude and mindsets, communication skills, understanding the perspective of others and better management of emotions. As a result of learning and consistently using these skills, pupils can put them into action in a safe environment (in our workshops) and discuss their learning in individual sessions.

Children who are able to overcome emotional obstacles:

• Increase their ability to focus and concentrate
  (and therefore) increase in their academic attainment
• Get back into mainstream school faster and have a more consistent education
• Reducing the need to attend a PRU
• Improve their academic outcomes meaning better long term prospects for them, the economy and wellbeing of the community
• Increase their confidence by helping others in similar situations in the future (by mentoring them.)

Whilst there are local services such as counselling available in many schools, we feel it is prudent to offer something more comprehensive for children who struggle with behaviour, social and emotional difficulties to learn how to overcome their problems by developing new strategies to deal with old situations. There are few services that offer a full-time, in-house delivery of both individual and group workshops except for NLP4Kids.

If you feel that this is something that your school needs; contact us today to speak to Gemma Bailey, the director of NLP4Kids, who can help your school achieve better education and learning environment for pupils.

By Gemma Bailey
https://nlp4kids.org/