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Jersey Evening Post – 20 November 2025

Our students made it onto the front page of the JEP!

 

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Jersey Evening Post – 17 November 2025

Putting people first: Highlands’ culture of wellbeing and connection

Eileen Buicke-Kelly, assistant principal of students and support at Highlands College, tells Emily Moore why the education establishment’s focus extends beyond grades and prioritises the health of staff, students and their parents and carers

WHEN considering options for further education, students – and the parents, teachers or employers advising them – will inevitably look at the courses on offer, the structure of the programme and the college or sixth form’s pass rate. And these features are, as Eileen Buicke-Kelly recognises, critical to the success of any education establishment. But there is another element, says the assistant principal of students and support at Highlands College, which is just as important.

“Of course, the technical and academic side is key and we always set targets that will stretch and challenge each student,” she explained, “but we also look at each student holistically and make sure they have the wraparound care they need to achieve their potential. While students may come here predominantly to achieve a vocational skill, our focus is also on helping them to be rounded people. That is why, whichever full-time course you are studying, there is an element of personal development built into the curriculum, as wellbeing and resilience is so important.” The way in which Highlands achieves this, says Eileen, is multi-faceted, taking place both in the classroom and through a range of support services available on the campus.

“Whatever you are studying, from hairdressing and culinary arts to engineering or healthcare, all full-time students take part in our Future Skills programme, a PSHE curriculum which we have designed in-house,” she explained. “This covers areas such as global citizenship, sustainability, careers, personal development, health and wellbeing.”

But that focus on wellbeing is not restricted to a weekly Future Skills session. As Eileen explains, students also have unrestricted access to the college student life support and wellbeing team who work closely with the Jersey Youth Services Youth Enquiry Service, more commonly known as the YES Project.

“The Highlands team includes staff who specialise in wellbeing and who are here to support any student experiencing stress or anxiety,” said the former chef. “However, the YES Project, which is based at Highlands College, takes that a step further, offering free, confidential and independent information and counselling to anyone between the ages of 12 and 25.”

And in the hope that several issues can be addressed before they become a serious cause of concern, Eileen says that the college has developed a student ambassador and leadership team, designed to amplify the “student voice”.

“The student voice piece is very important to us, and our leadership team meets the student representatives regularly to hear about anything they have identified and want us to look at or where they feel we need to improve,” she said.

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“Both the college and the students already undertake a lot of charitable work, both locally and overseas,” she said, “and our students’ efforts have inspired the college leadership team to step up and do even more. Starting this off, we will all be spending a day at St Paul’s Church to work alongside the volunteers at the Grace Trust in an initiative which I am particularly excited about because it will take me back to my hospitality roots.”

While student wellbeing is at the heart of Highlands’ ethos, Eileen adds that safeguarding and mentoring students in this way is only possible because of the college’s focus on staff wellbeing.

“The safeguarding of our students is the most important thing that happens at Highlands,” she stressed. “But to do that we have to think about the fabulous staff who teach our students and make sure that we safeguard them as well, so that they can put the students first.”

Central to this approach, says Eileen, is an appointment which the college made three years ago as part of its health and wellbeing strategy.

“We now have a wellbeing co-ordinator on the team, and he is a fundamental asset to the college community,” she said. “Critically, he comes from an education background, so he understands the pressures that staff face, particularly when it comes to dealing with students who are experiencing anxiety.

“The strategy which he is working with the leadership team to implement looks at everything from workload and staff voice to our teaching and learning strategy, which focuses on areas ranging from inclusion to coaching, so that we can create every opportunity for our staff to be the best version of themselves and deliver the best training for students.”

One of the greatest challenges to this, says Eileen, lies in the campus itself, which sees staff spread out across 11 buildings on two different sites.

“With people based in so many places, it is really important to have someone who joins all the dots together and creates opportunities for people to connect with one another,” she said. “As part of that, our mental-health co-ordinator sat down with every team in the college and built up an understanding of each staff member’s hobbies and any problems or challenges they were experiencing.

“They were then able to find synergies and connect people who enjoyed the same things, or who were facing similar difficulties, which has been hugely beneficial. We have also developed several initiatives such as art therapy, book clubs, yoga and men’s clinics to help bring people together, access support and have fun.

“All of these activities have made us realise that we are better together and can do better work when we are connected.”

Also helping to connect staff and students, says Eileen, is the college’s commitment to inclusion, something which she says has come into even sharper focus following the 2021 National Association for Special Educational Needs review into the Island’s inclusive education provision.

“Following the NASEN review, Highlands undertook a further strategic inclusion review to promote our aim of embedding inclusive practices into not just our teaching and learning but across all our support services,” she said. “Since then, we have achieved a huge amount and I am very proud of the team who have spearheaded that drive. This is such an important piece of work because if we don’t get this right, it is detrimental to the community.

“We’re now in a position where anyone who comes to us with a neurodiversity will succeed in line with their neurotypical peers.”

Having organised staff training across everything from assessment and inclusion to oracy and AI, Eileen says that the college has enhanced accessibility to its teaching and learning.

“While we always tried to be as inclusive as possible, the recent training has increased both staff confidence and consistency of inclusion across the college,” she said. “While we face the challenges that come with being based in a building which is not fit for purpose, through our people, we create an inclusive environment, which is so important.”

As part of that initiative, she says, the college’s focus extends beyond students and teachers.

“Three years ago we embarked on a project to strengthen our partnership with parents because that is vital for success,” she said. “Even though many of our students are over 16, we still believe that the more their parents are involved, the better the outcomes will be. To this end, we have just been awarded the Leading Partnership Parental Award in recognition of our outstanding work with parents and I am very proud of the fact that 98% of parents say they are very happy with the work we do at Highlands College.”

Indeed, not only does the college hold parent and carer evenings, but next year Highlands will host a parent and carer fair at which Eileen says there will also be a strong emphasis on wellbeing.

“The fair gives parents and carers the opportunity to meet the lecturers and see how their young people are getting on, and they will also be able to get advice about their own wellbeing and access information about anything from financial aid to progressing their own careers through further education,” she said. “Initiatives such as these are so important for the wider community and demonstrate Highlands’ commitment not just to its students but to everyone connected with them.”

And indeed that, says Eileen, is one of the things that makes her particularly proud to work at Highlands.

“We touch a huge number of Islanders,” she said. “When I walk down King Street at the weekends, I am always amazed by how many people I meet, all of whom are connected in some way to Highlands College. We really are a community within a community and it is a tremendous privilege to be a part of that.”

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