Principal

Harvard Global Flourishing Study 

Can you believe it’s the end of another term already?! Seems like only yesterday, I was lamenting the bareness of the branches down St Catherine’s Walk and the brazen onset of winter.  Truth be told, as the mother of a Year 12, I am not unhappy that the seasons are pushing my little household irrevocably towards a finale of sorts and the beginning of a new chapter. And like so many of us staring down the barrel of a child’s final year, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on that journey and the part I’ve played in shepherding her into her future.

Now, I’ve had many moments in my life where I’ve been left feeling profoundly inadequate but the worst, without exception, are those moments when I’ve fallen short as a mother, the most recent of which, occurred last weekend and had us retreating to separate ends of our very small terrace house, wondering how it got to that point so quickly… 

The trouble with 'moments' however, is that they don’t come upon you with neon signs or bells of warning, urging you to put your most rational, loving or empathetic foot forward because 'you’ve got this'. No, they do not! They come upon you quietly and seemingly benignly until of course, they’re not, at which point you realise it’s all late. 

In one of my favourite books entitled The Sportswriter, the American novelist Richard Ford articulates the uneasy tension that lies at the heart of the parent/child relationship and it goes like this:

“The worst of being a parent is my fate, then: being an adult. Not owning the right language, not dreading the same dreads and contingencies and missed chances; the fate of knowing much yet having to stand like a lamp post with its light lit, hoping my child will see the glow and venture closer for the illumination and warmth it mutely offers”.

This year especially has laid bare the truth, that I don’t always 'own the right language' that I can’t fix everything all the time, and that sometimes I just have to let go. (It’s easier to write than to do!). And worse, I’m an imperfect mix of mother and teacher. But love, illumination and warmth need no words and in this, at least, we can all take some comfort. 

It's no surprise, then, that when I came across the latest research from Harvard's Global Flourishing Study, it struck a chord because the data shows that student flourishing is driven primarily by joy, relationships, and feeling loved by parents. The strongest institutional drivers of adolescent flourishing in schools are similarly tied to social connection and humour, and the numbers are striking: students who reported laughing regularly with peers saw the single largest jump in flourishing scores, up 22 percent, while schools that actively cultivated a lighthearted, playful culture saw well-being rise by 17 percent. Even something as simple and unscripted as a teacher's sense of humour in the classroom made a measurable difference.

The study is emphatic on this point – schools must be understood as relational and formative communities first, and academic hubs second. Regular, unstructured conversation with teachers and staff outside formal lessons correlated strongly with higher well-being, as did structured efforts to build peer relationships (an 11 percent lift) and opportunities for purpose and service – volunteering, civic engagement, service-learning and more, which gave adolescents a sense of meaning the data suggests they often lack (a further 5 percent lift). On the other side of the ledger, heavier smartphone use tracked with flat or falling flourishing scores, while good sleep and regular physical activity stood out as the strongest everyday protections against dips in mental health.

But beneath all of it sits one foundational finding, and it is this that stayed with me longest: students who felt loved 'very much' by their parents or guardians reported substantially higher flourishing than those who felt loved only 'very little.' Not owning the right language, as it turns out, matters rather less than we fear.

With the third term holidays looming, and a busy program of revision and trial exams planned for week two of the break for the Year 12s, I take this opportunity to wish all our families some joy and unstructured time with the people who matter most – our children. 

Nil Magnum Nisi Bonum.

Ms Natalie Charles

Principal