Design of Professional Learning & Development

At Minds Ahead, we have worked with a range of clients to research and design professional learning events and programmes. We ensure that the latest thinking on mental health in schools is better understood and that delegates leave with increased confidence to make sustainable changes in their school or college.

We have designed innovative, national scale programmes. These include one-day events, short programmes right up to a fully validated Masters’ Programme in Mental Health in Schools. These have been rolled out by our clients, using their own training teams, with rights belonging to them. 

Our unique approach utilises evidence-based facilitated learning processes. This not only transfers knowledge but fosters deeper, applied thinking of the challenges faced by colleagues in their school or college. As a result, delegates will be equipped and inspired to improve mental health.  

We draw on a deep understanding of: 

  • mental health in schools
  • leadership 
  • change management
  • professional learning processes and 
  • the mental health and educational policy agenda

We have designed programmes for a range of clients including Health Education England, School Development Support Agency, Department for Education, Mental Health UK and Leeds Beckett University.

Examples of our work

Bloom, is a resilience programme that Minds Ahead wrote which equips young people aged 14-18 across the transition points such as moving through school, into employment and into university.  This programme helps young people learn the many skills that can help them to be resilient. The programme was designed with a teacher guide for teachers to deliver across the 4 nations of the UK. Minds Ahead managed an iterative process ensuring a wide-ranging focus group feedback when reviewing draft content. A pilot is now being run across the 4 nations to support the full roll out and delivery of the programme in 2021. 

Minds Ahead worked on this Health Education Funded Programme with the School Development Agency and a range of professionals to research and design a two-day programme which is now rolled out nationally using a cascade model with the Teaching School Council. To assist with roll-out Minds Ahead ran a ‘Train the Trainer’ workshop.

This Masters was conceived and researched from scratch by Minds Ahead.  We took it through validation and you can read more about this here.