Moving Minds, Growing Confidence: Utopia School’s RISE Up Wellbeing Journey

Neil @ Future Action
2 days ago
4 min read

Utopia School is a nurturing specialist setting committed to helping every young person feel safe enough to learn, grow, and thrive. Many of our students face barriers linked to anxiety, emotional regulation, past trauma, and disrupted educational journeys.

Movement has always been a strength of the school, but staff recognised an opportunity to embed a deeper, more intentional approach to physical activity, wellbeing routines, and trauma-informed practice.

By partnering with the Wirral RISE Up programme, Utopia School aimed to develop a whole-school wellbeing journey that improves mental fitness, widens the window of tolerance, and supports emotional regulation through movement.

To lead this work, the school’s brilliant Deputy Headteacher, Sarah Knowles, has driven the vision, modelling the relational, compassionate leadership that makes the programme thrive at Utopia.

Intent

Sarah explains:

“Our vision was simple but powerful: we wanted to improve the overall health and wellbeing of our students by giving them the tools, confidence, and opportunities to move more and feel better.

We’d noticed that many of our young people struggled to understand the connection between physical activity, concentration, and emotional regulation. For some, movement felt overwhelming or unsafe. For others, healthy habits just weren’t part of their everyday routines.

Our goal was to help students:

Move more throughout the day
Engage with healthy habits that support long-term wellbeing
Understand the link between movement, learning, concentration, and mood
Feel safe enough to take part in PE, even if they’d previously avoided it
Recognise that their health and wellbeing is something they can influence and strengthen

Ultimately, we wanted every student to feel empowered, confident, and supported to look after their mind and body.”

Implementation

Sarah shares how this vision came to life:

“To turn our intent into action, we made movement an everyday, accessible part of school life. We focused on embedding both structured and flexible movement opportunities across the curriculum.

Here’s what we introduced:

1. Movement opportunities within lessons

Exercise balls
Resistance bands
Fidgets

These helped students regulate, focus, and feel calmer in learning environments.

2. Adapting how PE is taught across the school

We redesigned PE so it was:

More inclusive
More student-led
More closely aligned with their sensory and emotional needs

We actively involved students in the process through a school-wide questionnaire.

3. Building staff confidence

We delivered whole-staff INSET on:

The neuroscience behind movement
Why brain breaks matter
How physical regulation supports learning
Practical strategies to increase movement in every lesson

This empowered staff to embed more active learning approaches.

4. Movement beyond the curriculum

We encouraged students to move outside formal PE through:

Duke of Edinburgh Award
Children in Need movement challenge
100 Miles in March challenge

5. Increasing PE options

We broadened the PE offer so more students could find something they enjoyed.

6. Active lunchtimes & breaktimes

We introduced a wider variety of sports and activities during social times to keep students moving and socially engaged.

7. Health and lifestyle changes

We adapted elements of the school lunch menu to support healthier eating.

8. RISE Up wellbeing interventions

We implemented:

RISE Up Mental Wellbeing programme
Sleep intervention modules

This helped students build emotional literacy, self-regulation tools, and healthier routines.”

Impact

Sarah reflects on the difference this has made:

“The changes have been transformational.

Student Wellbeing (SWEMWBS)

We’ve seen a 47% improvement in teacher perceptions of student mental wellbeing. The biggest gains were in:

Optimism
Relaxation
Confidence
Being able to make up their own mind

These reflect exactly what we hoped to achieve by creating psychological safety and a stronger sense of belonging.

School Wellbeing Scorecard

Our wellbeing provision has increased from 44% to 88%, a 44% improvement. This has helped us build a more consistent, whole-school approach that empowers both staff and students.

Pre Intervention Scorecard:

Post Intervention Scorecard:

Movement & Engagement

More students are taking part in PE
Students are moving more throughout the day
Attendance on PE days has improved
Some students who previously refused PE are now actively engaging, including two girls who now feel safe enough to move, which is huge progress

Overall, students tell us they feel:

Calmer
More energised
More focused
More confident in themselves

We couldn’t be prouder of the impact.”

Moving Forward

Sarah outlines the next steps:

“We’re committed to building on this success. Our next steps include:

Further expanding inclusive PE options
Embedding movement as a core regulation strategy across the whole school
Increasing student voice and co-design in our wellbeing curriculum
Continuing whole-staff training on trauma-informed approaches
Strengthening our RISE Up wellbeing curriculum
Tracking progress through ongoing WEMWBS and Scorecard reviews

We’re excited about what’s next. This programme has already made such a difference to our students’ confidence, wellbeing, and sense of belonging, and we look forward to deepening this work even further.”

Thank You To Sarah And Our Wirral RISE Up Colleagues

A huge thank you to Sarah and the whole team at Utopia School, and to all the schools involved in the Wirral RISE Up programme.

Sarah, Paul Stubbs from Meadowside, Dan Keefe from Clare Mount Specialist Sports College, and Oliver Terry from Wirral Virtual School recently shared the impact of their brilliant work across the Wirral at the Move Well Conference.

We recently released the interim report showing an average improvement of 30% in teacher perceptions of student mental wellbeing. You can read more here.

Fantastic work by an awesome group of educators. We would love to say a big thank you to Oliver Terry and the team at Wirral Virtual School for supporting the Wirral RISE Up programme.