Tuesday 10 October was World Mental Health Day and the theme for 2023, set by the World Foundation of Mental Health, was 'Mental health is a universal human right'. Two #PangCollUpper6th students, Hattie and Fin, spoke in Assembly addressing their peers about the new Peer Listening Course at Pangbourne College.

For the last 20 years, Pangbourne College has had Peer Mentors, specially trained members of the Upper Sixth who are there to listen, support, and help our pupils navigate the issues they are facing. Now we are at a point where we would like to extend this training to our younger year groups.

Our aim is to encourage more pupils to speak up about what is concerning them, rather than bottling it up. Hopefully, this will also lead to better relationships within our different year groups.

We are pleased to announce that we will be running Peer Listening training for Year 11 on a Monday and Year 10 on a Tuesday during Activities’ time. The training will start after Half Term and will be led by Mrs Caroline Bond, Assistant Head Pupil Mental Wellbeing, and some of our Upper Sixth Peer Mentors. It will cover many different areas including:

• How to be a good listener;
• Different sorts of problems that might be brought to you;
• Problem solving;
• Safeguarding and when to pass on an issue to a teacher.

This training will also develop important life skills which any university Admissions Officer or future employer will find very attractive.