Did you know that the small, mountainous, landlocked country of Bhutan measures the success of any policy implementation through an index of gross national happiness?
Calculated through a wealth of indicators, the gross national happiness index was developed in the 1970s and provides a clear point for the country to be able to measure its success. The happiness of the population matters above all else.
Bhutan, it seems to me, is extremely lucky. As a nation, they have decided on what matters and developed a way of measuring it. They can evaluate the progress they are making as a country by a clearly defined set of criteria that contribute to a national definition of what makes the country a good place to live.
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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also has a nuanced definition of the success of a nation, under the heading of wellbeing. Wellbeing, it suggests, is a much more rounded indicator of progress and success, taking into account not only economic factors, but social and environmental measures, as well as relationships and the social connectedness of the community.
Using this broad holistic measure, we can define wellbeing as the quality of people’s lives and their standard of living; a multi-dimensional construct that comprises both objective, material components and the subjective, psychological facets.
We know that student wellbeing is important, and those with greater wellbeing have better life outcomes. Yet, how meaningfully is the conversation about wellbeing happening across the schools sector in England? How often is the concept of wellbeing being diluted into a measure of mental health?
The importance of definition
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill does not offer a definition of wellbeing. Ofsted rarely mentions the term, instead preferring to outline their purpose and the processes they use. The Education Inspection Framework (2024) suggests that learners should develop knowledge and skills and so achieve well. This is heavily geared towards examinations and statutory assessments as a means of assessing success; examinations that some students, by design, will never succeed in.
All of these documents, important as they are, seem to rely on a nebulous understanding of what matters, accompanied by a large dose of professional judgment. Wellbeing is more than that.
Interestingly, the inspection framework used by Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI, the voluntary inspectorate for independent schools) is explicit in how it defines wellbeing and has adopted a broader, holistic view to its framework, with the social, economic, cognitive and psychological wellbeing of students at the heart of the judgments made.
ISI challenges school leadership to actively promote student physical and emotional health and mental health, their education, training and recreation, their contribution to society, their economic and social wellbeing and to protect them from harm and neglect.
The definition of wellbeing used here is defined in statute, in the 2004 Children’s Act. The framework explains that school leadership must actively promote student wellbeing to achieve the standards in the framework.
Wellbeing is talked about a lot in education, yet our sense of what it means or how we measure it seems to have been lost. Perhaps before ploughing on with new models and ways of working, we should define what it will look like when we get things right and ensure we have robust measures of that success.
What will gross national happiness in education look like for all our students, our communities and our schools? And how will we know when we have got it right?
Megan Dixon is an associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University
