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Recently, we spoke with James Flanagan, Lead Senior Tutor, at Altrincham Grammar School for Girls (AGGS) to explore the theme of school belonging and celebrate what they are already doing to contribute to this important factor to wellbeing. AGGS is an all-girls selective grammar school based in Trafford, Greater Manchester. They are part of Bright Futures Education Trust, and have taken part in #BeeWell since 2021, initially as one of our pathfinder schools.
In their #BeeWell school-level data, Altrincham Grammar School for Girls report a higher level of school belonging than the average, and saw an increase in their scores for Year 10s from 2023 to 2024. We spoke to them to understand what might be driving these improvements and what we could learn about belonging. Some aspects they shared with us included:
Stability in the staffing of the school has supported pupils to build connections and know who is available for them to access support. Staff relationships is another area they see above average in their school-level data and was identified as one of the factors associated with school belonging in our School Belonging Evidence briefing.
And, they have done work on specific themes they think might’ve contributed to this…
Co-developing school values and behaviour/reward system
James shared with us how the school recently updated their school values, and worked with students on a process through form time to pick what those would be. Pupils were given a choice of values and asked to pick what was most important to them. In the end, they selected Courage, Kindness and Curiosity – aiming for a short and memorable list that supported them to build the school identity. They use these values in their feedback to young people and in their positive behavioural policy, hoping to embed this further as a next step in this work.
Supporting a sense of belonging for Year 7 pupils
AGGS school data shows that Year 7 pupils have a high level of school belonging. Unpicking this further, we talked about their approach to transition and supporting Year 7s as they start at the school. This includes days to come in and meet their form tutors and their forms and developing their form time curriculum to include peer relationships. James noted their Head of Year 7 had focused on building an identity as a year group, focusing on the form as a team and the year group being in it together
The role of the form tutor
Along with the above focus on Year 7s, we spoke about how form tutors do regular mental health and wellbeing check-ins with their group, with a survey to flag anyone that could need further support from the school.
Peer mentorship programme
AGGS have also started to run a new peer mentors programme, which they believe could be impacting on this improved sense of belonging. The programme involves sixth form students in Year 12 supporting a younger group of pupils, working with a specific form and form tutor to see how they can support younger pupils. This was trialled for the first time this year, and they will be undertaking further feedback to see how to strengthen the programme for 2025/26.
“As a school we were really pleased to see that our school belonging score had improved, as this was a key area of focus for us and has a huge bearing on the wellbeing and future success of our students. It highlighted to us that we are on the right track in our aim to create a school community where all students feel that they belong. The #BeeWell data has allowed us to look at what we are doing well, but also highlighted areas for further exploration. We are currently surveying students to dig deeper into belonging in school and aiming to build upon what we have done well already. We are especially focusing on our relational behaviour policy, linked to our school values, the use of form-time and form tutors and developing the use of peer mentors.”
James, Altrincham Grammar School for Girls
