On Tuesday we held our Boys Mental Health Awareness pop-up event in support of World Mental Health Day. Whilst all of our events and initiatives are inclusive, we take time to highlight particular issues, groups or focuses with these events.

This time our focus is on Boys Mental Health, with Movember coming around the corner it is so important to raise the profile of supporting positive mental health, especially for boys across the world.

Join us in celebrating and supporting mental health each and every day

On Friday staff across the school celebrated World Teacher Day with personalised thank-you’s to each other for the support given throughout the term so far.

As always it was overwhelmingly positive to see how those few thoughtful words of thanks impacted everybody’s day, brining many smiles to the faces of each other.

Whilst the thank-you’s remain personal to staff, we can share that over 600 individual thank you messages have been hand delivered to the individuals in receipt of them.

This is a great show of how the team support one and other and care for the wellbeing of all – Happy World Teacher Day all!

This Thursday 9^th October, four pupils from Etone College attended the first meeting of the Nuneaton Youth Parliament, hosted by Nuneaton's MP, Jodie Gosling, at Nuneaton Town Hall. The Nuneaton Youth Parliament brought together Schools and Colleges from across the Parliamentary constituency. 

The Mayor of Nuneaton and Bedworth, Bhim Saru, attended the start of the Parliament, wishing the pupils a successful meeting and thanking them for getting involved in local democracy. Following this the pupils discussed, in small groups, one thing that they enjoyed about Nuneaton, and one thing they would improve. There were a variety of excellent answers, praising Nuneaton's close knit communities, but also suggestions that improvements could be made in public transport and road infrastructure. 

The pupils later debated the desired values for the Youth Parliament, using the Nolan Principles (ethical standards expected of public office holders) as a starting point. Our Etone pupils argued that the most important Nolan Principle is integrity, which also happens to be one of Etone's Learner Values! 

Later on, pupils had a chance to do some questions and answers with the local MP, Jodie Gosling, which included discussions regarding housing, anti-social behaviour and town centre regeneration. At the end of the meeting, pupils agreed the core areas of focus for future meetings of the Nuneaton Youth Parliament - which included safer communities, environment & leisure, and education. 

Before the meeting closed, pupils were joined by Councillor Nicky King, the Borough Council Cabinet member for Business and Regeneration, who spoke to pupils about what the local authority was doing for town centre regeneration. 

In this exciting Psychology programme with UEA, Ispa and Birkbeck, students will get the chance to learn more about psychological research by being participants in a live experiment that is tackling a cutting-edge topic relevant to brain processes in late adolescence.

Across four interactive sessions taking place during the 2025-2026 academic year, Dr Inês Mares, Professor Marie Smith and Dr Gareth Edwards, will ‘pull back the curtain’ on the research process to highlight the issues that must be considered and addressed in order to design, conduct, analyse and interpret studies with human participants that are theoretically important, ethically sound, and empirically robust.

On Friday Etone College once again celebrated World Mental Health Day. First established in 1992 the event is an initiative from the World Federation for Mental Health, a global mental health organization with members and contacts in more than 150 countries, as an opportunity to raise awareness for mental health concerns and to remove the stigma surrounding mental health.

To honour the day Etone pupils will have the opportunity over Friday and the rest of the week to;

• Attend our Theme of the Week Assembly, where they will explore some of the negative impacts from poor mental health and the ways we can promote and support positive health.
• Form time activities where pupils with have the chance to plan effective strategies to ensure positive mental health.
• Pop-up Wellbeing Stand hosted by our Wellbeing Ambassadors and Wellbeing team, sharing support, advice and treats across break time.
• Wear yellow ribbons and stickers in support of positive mental health.
• Attend our monthly Brew Monday event with hot chocolate, games and biscuits to relax and chat to peers as we unwind.

Remember that we have our key top tips for maintaining a positive mental health along with information about all of our other mental health and wellbeing initiatives here: https://www.etonecollege.co.uk/student-wellbeing/

You may have noticed the September Numeracy Competition winners displayed on the school screens. We are pleased to share that A Beard (7G2) came in first place and won a Harry Potter Funko Pop, followed by E Sharkey (9D2) in second place, and I Higgs (7D2) in third place.

We would like to take this opportunity to update you on how each House is performing after the first competition.

Here is a quick summary:

• Dragon House is currently in the lead with 54 points.
  • Form group 8D1 has the highest individual score so far with 19 points.
• Griffin House is very close behind with 53 points.
• Centaur House is just behind them on 51 points.
• Phoenix House has 40 points, putting them 14 points off the lead.

Looking at form groups:

• 8P2 are close behind the leaders with 15 points.
• 8G2 follow with 13 points.

With scores still very close, everything is still to play for! We’re excited to see how the standings might change after the Ada Lovelace Day competition next week.

We wish to say a warm welcome to our new ambassadors and welcome back our ambassadors from last year.  As a careers ambassador students will get the chance to be involved in events such as:

• mentoring the year 7's to help them decide their options for possible careers for the future. ​
• meetings and group talks. ​
• careers fair ​
• Showing various visitors around the school​
• Receiving training from the Careers hub​

I look forwards to working with you all this year