A warm welcome to Positive Education Schools Association (PESA)

If you’ve landed here, this probably means you share our passion for education and its potential to nurture and support young people as they make a healthy transition into adult life, allowing them and others around them to flourish.

Every parent wants their child to be happy, healthy, and confident, every parent wants their child to be set up for success. Education is one the best tools we have for this, and as such its role has always been about equipping young people with the skills and knowledge needed to prepare them for life. For the last two centuries, formal education has focused on academic achievement as the best way to achieve this.

However, as time has gone on the challenges that young people face are different to those of the generations that came before them. The world has changed, and change continues to move at an unprecedented pace, disconnection and loneliness are growing, and young people are more disillusioned with life and the future than ever before. According to Mission Australia’s annual youth survey (the largest annual youth survey in Australia), 41.9% of young people are extremely concerned about their mental health, and of those studying 46% feel there are significant barriers to achieving their work and study goals with mental health and academic ability being the biggest barriers identified. These changes and new challenges they bring require our education system to adjust and refocus, we need to acknowledge that well-being and mental resilience are skills young people not only need but want to learn.

Adding to this, it’s clear from the research that well-being is not only a concern for young people but is a scientifically proven pre-determinant for learning which has a direct effect on a young person’s academic success. Well-being and mental resilience are also pre-determinants for almost every marker of what it means to make a healthy transition into adult life. They affect a young person’s ability to find meaningful employment and stay employed, to create healthy relationships, to be a good partner, friend, and parent, to stay connected to their community and remain fit and well.

This is why I’m so passionate and committed to seeing PESA grow, so it can achieve its vision for the science of well-being and positive psychology to be integrated throughout the education system. PESA is the peak body for Positive Education, because we believe Positive Education is the best tool we have to achieve our vision. Positive Education teaches achievement and accomplishment (education’s traditional tools for equipping young people for life) along with Positive Psychology-informed mental health skills (the additional skills young people need for the future). In other words, Positive Education wants to bring Positive Psychology’s goals of improving well-being and providing mental health support into the school setting. In this way, Positive Education is about solving this problem that traditional education has been grappling with for some time. How do schools prepare young people for the challenges of the future whilst simultaneously creating the best environments for learning?

If you share our passion and vision for how Positive Education can transform our education system and better meet the needs of young people today, please get in touch. This organisation was born out of collaboration, and we can only do this by working together. Better yet, why not sign up to become a PESA member today? Membership not only gives you the support and resources you need to implement Positive Education in your organisation, it’s also the best way you can support us in achieving our mission and help bring our vision to life.

We look forward to welcoming you to our rapidly growing community.

 

We are delighted to welcome you to our rapidly growing community.

Marita Hayes-Brown
PESA CEO