Wellbeing isn't only about how we feel today — it's also about how we think about tomorrow. Thursday: Thrive — Purpose, Goals & Future invited students of all ages to reflect on what really matters to them.

We chose this theme to push wellbeing beyond the immediate and into the longer term. Helping students think honestly about what makes them happy, and what they're working towards, builds resilience — a sense that their choices matter and that the future is something they can shape, not just something that happens to them.

In Primary

Our younger students spent the day on My Happy Place, reflecting on what genuinely makes them happy so that they can carry on doing more of it. Rather than simply talking about it, children wrote their thoughts down and turned them into a very special piece of art — giving them a concrete, personal record of their own happiness that they can keep and look back on. Creating something tangible matters here: it turns an abstract idea like "wellbeing" into something a five- or eight-year-old can hold in their hands and be proud of. Classrooms were filled with genuinely thoughtful, individual pieces of work, and children were keen to explain the story behind their art to anyone who would listen.

In Secondary

  • The £1 Million Life Challenge (KS3): Working in groups, students were given a fictional £1 million and had to decide how to allocate it across housing, education, career, travel, family, experiences, savings and helping others — then explain their choices, with no spending it all on luxury items allowed. This forced genuinely practical conversations about priorities and values that students rarely get the chance to have.
  • What Nobody Tells You About Being 25 (KS4): Students explored realistic life scenarios — changing career, moving country, losing touch with friends, not yet knowing what they want to do — and discussed which felt likely, possible, or unlikely, and why. The value here was reassurance: seeing that uncertainty and setbacks are a normal part of adult life, not a sign of failure.
  • Life Advice from 2036 (KS5): Students imagined themselves ten years older, writing advice back to their current selves: What do you wish you'd stopped worrying about? What mattered more than you expected? What would you tell your 16-year-old self to start doing now? Writing to themselves, rather than being lectured by an adult, made the advice land as genuinely their own.

Staff described today's work as some of the most mature and reflective of the year, whatever the age group — from the honesty in primary children's happy-place artwork to the depth of thinking in secondary students' life advice. That depth of thought and self-awareness is the real success of Thrive day.

One day to go. Tomorrow, we bring the week to a close with Friday: Enjoy — a day of joy, creativity and celebration.