Wellbeing comprises whole child, whole school approaches to promoting mental health
Although most pupils are doing OK, we have a mental health crisis impacting on a significant number of children and young people. Schools can either exacerbate the difficulties or ameliorate them. Schools that are doing well for all the children and young people in their care are concerned about more than academic success. They want pupils to enjoy learning, feel they can be successful and know that people care about them.
This evaluation document has been developed from many research findings on wellbeing, mental health and resilience, healthy relationships, belonging and a positive school climate.
Schools who put wellbeing at the heart of their endeavours will find that children and young people are more engaged at school and academic outcomes reflect this; that mental health and resilience improve; there is more pro-social behaviour as positive relationships as modelled and taught and teacher retention increases as teacher wellbeing is addressed.
ASPIRE is an acronym for the principles on which school wellbeing is built: Agency, Safety, Positivity, Inclusion, Respect and Equity. Schools are ecologies, what happens in one part of the system affects what happens elsewhere so a whole school approach needs to include all stakeholders: students, staff, whole school and the community.
Here we explore how well your school is doing and what steps you might take to further develop a wellbeing approach.
Each school will be starting from a different place – this evaluation will need to be completed at different times. It will help schools construct an action plan for change and provide evidence for development.
For each principle and each category, you are asked to consider the following:
- This happens regularly – observable outcomes are …
- We are working towards this – so far, we have …
- At the moment this does not happen – our plans are to …
You can download the survey form as either a Word document or a fillable PDF form.