About Gilda

Gilda Scarfe BA(Ed), LLB, M.Ed. CAPP is the CEO of Positive Action UK and has supported Illuminate Education – a non-profit organisation promoting Positive Education initiatives – though advice on strategic direction and implementation of Positive Education. She has been responsible for the organisation and implementation of Positive Education strategies at Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, Kings School in Canterbury, Simon Langton Grammar School for Girls and has worked with state funded schools (i.e. Canterbury High, Southfield School, St Anselm etc.) to promote and imbed positive psychology in the PHSE curriculum.

Gilda has a formal background in education and law. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in positive psychology at Queens University.

Gilda’s dream is for every school in the UK to fully and seamlessly incorporate positive education into their curriculum and application for students, staff, and families. Her work includes strategic planning for designing, delivering and implementing wellbeing and mental toughness programmes in schools, framework redesign for primary and secondary schools, as well as strengths-based coaching using the VIA instrument.

Passionate about improving wellbeing and mental toughness in education through innovative, yet simple, interventions, Gilda is always keen to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners in making a practical and powerful impact to the world of education.

Gilda is also a Global Ambassador for International Positive Education Network (IPEN).

 
“Gilda’s work has had a huge impact on students in both of our schools. She has an impressive understanding of the psychology of adolescence and the teaching and learning programmes she has devised, together with the support she provides to teachers, have ensured that students have benefited positively from the Positive Action programme. Her one-to-one dealings with students, parents, teachers and school leaders are highly effective and reveal a commitment to a vision of education which aims to develop emotional resilience, mental toughness and intellectual courage in students. Importantly, she has convinced us of the need to integrate the Positive Action philosophy into the whole curriculum and to ensure that supporting students to understand of their own psychology and to build their self-awareness, self-regulation and self-efficacy are central and guiding principles of the school’s culture. We are about to begin the third year of the programme and already we have fewer students reporting difficulties with anxiety, self-assessments indicate students are more optimistic and ambitious about their future (whilst remaining personally realistic) and academic assessments suggest a rising trend in standards.”
— Dr Matthew Baxter, Executive Head Teacher, Simon Langton Grammar Schools