Spotlight on: Wellbeing at Marlborough College Malaysia
Wellbeing has been at the heart of MCM for its history, with a particular focus in the past 5 years, from embedding Positive Psychology into the curriculum, to hosting our own International Conference, Wellbeing is central to our philosophy. This week, MCM hosted its first ever Wellbeing Conference in partnership with Komodo and COBIS, welcoming leaders in educational pastoral care from 40 schools, 11 countries and 4 continents. This conference aimed to share best practice, insights and provide networking and collaboration opportunities for different aspects of wellbeing in schools, with speakers from schools across the world, including our own experts at MCM.
Wellbeing is about living our best life, and is an element of education we continue to recognise and develop. Our own Flourishing@MCM framework truly came into fruition with the appointment of Ms Diana Trif in 2019 as MCM’s Researcher in Residence. A Masters graduate in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, Ms Trif gathered, analysed and interpreted a vast amount of MCM’s wellbeing data to help us to build a bespoke Wellbeing model that was underpinned by academic research and addressed actual, rather than perceived need. The quality of our Wellbeing provision is recognised by COBIS from whom we have received the coveted and rarely awarded Beacon Status. We were also delighted to be internationally recognised with the Strategic Leadership Award by the International Schools Council.
Our Wellbeing journey has not stopped there, however, as we have continued to develop our provision so we remain as one of the world’s leading schools in this critical aspect of education. Our Wellbeing Conference is one example of this, where we had all regional Beacon Schools coming to MCM to see our provision and share some of the great initiatives they are running. The conference was excellent and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive about the content and the warmth of welcome in the College. The delegates also enjoyed a tour around our award-winning Barton Farm which contributes positively to the wellbeing of our pupils, helping them to connect with nature, see how their food grows, and experience the joys of their labour, eating the very food they plant. We also have an excellent Wellbeing programme running throughout the College designed around our four domains of Body, Mind, Spirit and Community.
Wellbeing continues to affect every aspect of college life so we do all we can to see our pupils flourish.
