At Oakleigh Primary School and Kindergarten we encourage and support our students so that they can flourish. Flourishing is a combination of ‘feeling good and doing good’.

Positive Education at Oakleigh Primary School focuses on the explicit teaching of skills that assist students to build mutually respectful relationships, promote positive emotions and mindfulness, enhance personal resilience and grit, and encourage a healthy lifestyle. We also aim to foster engagement, encourage them to achieve, be grateful for the good things in their life and ultimately, equip them with the qualities to enable them to reach their full potential.

Positive Education is taught alongside Respectful Relationships lessons. The Respectful Relationships program was borne out of The Royal Commission into Family Violence that identified the critical role that schools and early childhood education have in creating a culture of respect to change the story of family violence for future generations.

Our Growth Mindset enables us to approach tasks with confidence and by turning challenge into opportunity. With a Growth Mindset we can be adaptable and flexible to change and growth.

Our school values are linked to the principles of this work.

The values that form the basis of the actions of our learning community are:

Positive Emotion: Train your mind to focus on the positives rather than the negatives; be resilient.

Happy people look back on the past with gladness; look into the future with hope; and enjoy and cherish the present. Having the ability to recover strength, confidence and good humour. When things go wrong we are able to ‘bounce back’ or ‘bounce forward’. 

Engagement: Use and improve your character strengths to carry out each task to the best of your ability.

When we focus on doing the things we truly enjoy and care about, we can begin to engage completely with the present moment and enter the state of being known as ‘flow’.

Relationships: Create and maintain harmonious, fulfilling relationships.

Everyone needs someone. We enhance our wellbeing and share it with others by building strong relationships with the people around us – family, friends, classmates and neighbours.

Meaning: Belong to and serve something bigger than one’s self.

We are at our best when we dedicate our time to something greater than ourselves. This could be religious faith, community work, family, a political cause, a charity, a professional or creative goal.

Accomplishment: Have a growth mindset. Strive for and achieve success.

Everyone needs to win or achieve sometimes. To achieve wellbeing and happiness we must be able to look back on our lives with a sense of accomplishment: ‘I did it, and I did it well’.