Teachers everywhere have known it intuitively for years but more and more research now shows us that student wellbeing has a direct impact on academic performance.
Not only that but it’s important to stay on top of student wellbeing to pick up on any issues and intervene before more significant problems arise further down the line.
So, how can schools keep on top of student wellbeing and ensure support is there when required?
One way is to survey students about how they are finding school, their studies and wider life, thereby gaining insights into their state of mind.
Taking action
We started doing this as after Covid-19 hit, when we noticed a significant rise in mental wellbeing difficulties. We reflected on different approaches that would enable us to be more proactive.
We realised that we needed a tool that would enable us to quickly capture a snapshot of our total student body and highlight any difficulties, so we could respond to them before they escalated.
There are plenty of commercial products that can help, and we decided to adapt an existing and freely available tool, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), as part of our efforts in this area.
Since our school uses Google for Education, all of our students are registered with a secure individual user account. We adapted the SDQ and recreated it as a Google Form. This is linked to a spreadsheet that auto-populates with the student responses and calculates individual scores in the measured areas: hyperactivity, emotional problems, conduct problems, peer problems and prosocial skills.
Students are able to complete the form only under their school account, with strict access rights governing who can see what. For a school that uses Office 365, a Microsoft Form would work just as well.
By using the SDQ through our own platform, we have complete ownership over the data we gather, and can adjust our approach as we grow and develop our data sets.
The only addition we have made to the SDQ at this stage is a general text box where students can list any other concerns or worries they may have.
Encourage engagement
Once the SDQ was recreated for our school, we scheduled a week in the calendar for students to complete the questionnaires during tutor time. It took about 10 minutes for them to fill in.
We introduced the SDQ to our students as a helpful tool to measure how they are feeling and let them know that it would be seen and read by staff.
While some were a bit sceptical at first, once they realised staff genuinely read their answers and engaged with the results, the response was overwhelmingly positive.
After analysing the results (with colour-coded cells for significantly worrying scores, following the criteria from the SDQ manual), we schedule follow-up meetings between form tutors and students.
Staff training is provided on how to open up a dialogue, establish rapport with the student and engage them in a supportive dialogue about potential issues they may be facing.
To help assist tutors managing the sheer volume of checking in with each of their students, trained support staff and senior leadership team members help out and also meet with individual students.
These follow-up meetings are then recorded in the main Google Sheet and any decisions are noted, for example, “follow up with counsellor”.
The great strength of checking up on wellbeing in this manner is that it allows us to “find the hidden ones”, the students who keep quiet but are silently struggling.
And since the SDQ is designed to be completed twice a year, it gives us a strong research-based tool to continually monitor our students’ wellbeing.
Build a picture over time
Furthermore, by recording information in one central spreadsheet, we are able to import this data as a comma separated value file (which allows data to be saved in a tabular format) into our school admin system.
This means we can build up a picture over time of each student individually, and spot any strengths and difficulties trends, either individually or per cohort.
Next to the SDQ, we have developed and implemented a more basic Google Form called the “Kellett Weekly Check-In” (KWCI) for our senior school students.
This check-in is designed to be quick, taking no more than a minute or two, and provide a snapshot of how a student is feeling that week.
It consists of eight questions on the topics of workload, happiness, sleep and stress. Tutor conversations and counselling interventions based on the KWCI help to solve lower-level issues in conjunction with the more significant measurement from the SDQ.
Where the KWCI captures brief week-by-week checkpoints, the SDQ reflects longer-term social-emotional development.
Interventions from the additional support team, our school counsellors and pastoral staff are then based on identified issues and can proactively target expected problems based on past information.
With the KWCI and SDQ being self-reported, ownership of any potential difficulties is immediately recognised by the student, which helps with potential resistance towards interventions.
Following on from the success of the SDQ in our senior school, we are currently trialling a similar approach in our prep schools using a different questionnaire.
The significant value of the SDQ is that it is self-reported but the individual version is only available for ages 11+. A similar, but simpler, questionnaire exists for primary-aged pupils: Me and My Feelings.
As a trial this academic year, we will evaluate how effective this tool is for our community. Similarly to the SDQ, it is available free online and has a strong research base behind it.
Student feedback from these pastoral conversations and individual follow-ups has been incredibly positive. They say they have felt truly seen and heard by our staff when engaging with them on their personal issues.
After three years of interrupted schooling as a result of Covid, these tools are helping to restore our community as we move forward.
Jaap Marsman is deputy headteacher for additional support and wellbeing at Kellett School, the British International School in Hong Kong
