Penn Resiliency Program


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OK. This is frustrating. The Penn resiliency Program looks like something I’d like to try at school, but I can’t find any people who offer courses for staff and schools.

There seem to have been some pilots in the UK. The Young Foundation has a good writeup of the Government’s trail version of the scheme (“The UK Resilience Programme”).



The final report is here and the final results but the final policy results look a little bleak.

The UK Resilience Programme did have a small average impact on pupils’ depression scores, school attendance, and English and maths grades, but only in the short run (up to one-year follow-up). There was no average impact on any measure at two-year follow-up. This means that any improvements in pupils’ psychological well-being, attendance and attainment were short-lived, and by the time of the two-year follow-up (June 2010) pupils who had participated in UKRP workshops were doing no better on these outcomes than pupils who had not. This suggests that a single set of UKRP lessons is not enough to permanently change pupils’ outcomes on average.

I can see that one set won’t be enough to permanently change pupils’ outcomes but presumably the resiliency needs to be embedded in the curriculum rather than piloted as a bolt on.

That said, before teachers at school will even begin to think about fiddling with the curriculum, a pilot would be useful.

Next stop, Wellington and their Happiness Course and Cambridge’s Well-being Institute