Surrey Square Primary School

The UK school that integrated an ‘Equip to Thrive’ curriculum to give marginalised children wrap-around wellbeing and educational support

Surrey Square Primary School, a public kindergarten and primary school in Southwark, London, UK, is prioritising the comprehensive development of marginalised students from diverse backgrounds through a model that blends academic learning with a wraparound system of family wellbeing and support. The project-based curriculum is helping children as young as five identify local challenges and actively contribute to changing them. The community around the school is made up of a large number of families that hail from West Africa, Bangladesh, Somalia, Algeria, Peru, Colombia, Poland, Jamaica, and Lithuania. It serves a highly diverse, high-needs population where close to 85% of families are within the lowest percentile on the IDA deprivation index and around 25% live in temporary accommodation, with less than 10% having no access to public funds. Coupled with this, a quarter of the pupils are on the special educational needs register, which is a significant barrier to how they feel, behave and engage with learning.

Determined to give these children real pathways to explore their potential, the school has designed an intensive pastoral pedagogy that takes into account the whole child, including family members, within its ‘Equip to Thrive’ curriculum that integrates learning with wellbeing, values and life skills. Project-based with a focus on real issues within the local community, the model is driven by changemaker projects where students are taught ‘thrive’ skills of collaboration, communication, and creative problem-solving in real community contexts where they can design and develop working solutions. A recent example of this was a project that addressed the community problem of rat infestations. Children took collective action, writing hundreds of letters and posting them through the doors of Southwark Council, which led to council officials visiting the school to listen to children’s concerns and committing to concrete action. Wellbeing is also treated as the foundation of learning, and teachers integrate practices like daily journaling into classrooms.

Behind these projects is a deliberately structured system that allows the school to consistently respond to the lived realities the learners have to face. Rather than relying on reactive interventions, Surrey Square has built a coordinated, whole-school approach where every child is regularly reviewed through provision mapping. Each term, teachers, support staff, safeguarding leads and senior leadership come together to assess academic progress alongside emotional, social and safeguarding needs, creating a shared understanding of each child and a clear plan of support. This is reinforced through weekly pastoral meetings, ensuring that concerns are identified early and acted on before they escalate.

This approach reflects a fundamental shift in how the school understands behaviour and learning. Rather than viewing disruption as something to be managed, it is treated as information. Staff are trained to notice patterns and small changes like a child arriving hungry, learners becoming more isolated, or struggling to concentrate, and to respond with care instead of consequences. In one family, what started as persistent behavioural issues led to the discovery that the family was experiencing homelessness. By intervening to provide housing support, food and clothing, the school was able to stabilise the situation, resulting in a significant transformation in the child’s engagement and progress.

A key principle guiding the school is a solution-oriented mindset of ‘what can we do?’ through the Old Kent Road Family Zone, a community-led initiative facilitated by the school that brings together local government, health services, businesses and over 20 voluntary organisations. This has led to the creation of initiatives such as a Saturday Marketplace addressing food insecurity, a youth club focused on community safety, and a community restaurant tackling social isolation. The Family Zone now engages over 450 community members each month, reinforcing the school’s role as a central node within a broader support network.

What makes this model particularly powerful is its ability to operate at both local and systemic levels. Through sustained advocacy, the school has contributed to national policy changes, including the extension of free school meals to children with no recourse to public funds and the introduction of citizenship fee waivers. These changes have had a direct impact not only on its own pupils, but on vulnerable children across the UK.

Despite only around 20–26% of pupils being on track academically when they join the school, 85% reach expected standards by the end of Year 6. At Key Stage 2, 71% of disadvantaged pupils meet national benchmarks in reading, writing and maths, significantly above the national average of 46%. There have been zero permanent exclusions over the past five years, and the school has developed a culture characterised by trust, belonging and stability.