Wellbeing Education - guest blog by Nigel Gann

Happy Schools?
Richard Layard Happiness: Lessons from a New Sciencesuggests that the things that make people happy are our social lives, the trust we have in others, the continuity of our lives, our feelings of self-worth (including feeling at least as well off as other people), and the feeling that things are getting better.

Can such elements be striven for in schools? Are they measurable? And if so, what will that tell us? And what’s it got to do with schools?

Individual happiness is an aspiration which depends on a variety of factors, personal and general. We hope to be happy in our work and in our personal lives. We work better when we feel good. Schools can be happy, or not.

That may depend on the agglomeration of personal happiness – over which we have little control – or, more likely, it is at least partly dependent on the characteristics of the school – its structures, its ways of working, its collective sense of self-worth and meaningful achievement.

What a Wellbeing School might look like
Case studies strongly suggest that a focus on staff wellbeing raises morale, improves practice, and develops collegiality, as well as raising outcomes at both primary and secondary levels.
Schools where staff have a greater sense of wellbeing are better places to be – they recruit and retain good staff more effectively than other schools; staff are off sick less and report lower levels of stress; and they produce better results.

They are not afraid to try new things or to evaluate their own performance. They also have a more positive impact on students.

They are places where people feel good most of the time. They are also likely to be places where people are valued more for their intrinsic personal worth than for their status in a hierarchical organisation.

Like most organisations, the key issues that arise in schools for all staff are communications and managing workload. Often the former is the greatest concern of support staff, who find themselves left out of the loop more often than they should, while the second is cited mainly, but not exclusively, by teaching staff and senior management.

Some examples of changing school practice
These examples come from the implementation of wellbeing programmes across schools in a large urban local authority.

• A school found that deadlines were causing enormous stress for staff. Somehow, teachers were always taken by surprise a week or so before the deadline for assessments and reports. The headteacher agreed to formulate the calendar for the next academic year as early as possible, to involve staff at a consultative phase, to keep deadlines clearly highlighted in a prominent place, and to find the right balance between reminding and nagging.
  
• In a secondary school, staff reported, in the survey, that they often felt they were spoken to by other staff in disrespectful ways. They spent the next two staff meetings sharing experiences and discussing solutions, and resolved to review the situation annually so as not to let this happen again.
  
• In a primary school, staff reported substantial bullying, harassment and disrespectful behaviour. In the post-survey discussion, it was discovered that this referred to a small group of parents collecting their children at the end of the school day. This had been raised once some time before, but the then head had explained it away as the inevitable behaviour to be expected of parents in that neighbourhood. The new head declared this to be unacceptable, gave staff an immediate verbal response and walk-away strategy, and provided a local authority form reporting abuse of LA staff. The LA acted swiftly, declaring site bans on three families, and the issue was, for the moment, resolved.
  
• A secondary school set up an agreement with a local garage to provide MOTs and servicing for staff cars, with collection from and delivery to the school car park.
  
• In one primary school, the lunchtime staff were distressed on Children in Need Day, when all other staff and the children were dressed in pyjamas and dressing gowns. No-one had told them. The answer: The caretaker spent part of the next holidays making individual pigeon-holes for all staff, and the headteacher and administration staff made sure that newsletters, staff announcements, thank-you notes and, sometimes, chocolates would be found there.
  
• A primary school introduced the use of texting to staff mobiles, so that part-time staff and staff absent for any reason still received important up-to-date information.

In each of these cases, the school showed itself sensitive and responsive to concerns that worried staff, affected their experience of their work and reduced their effectiveness.

What can we do in schools?
What can we do to help to achieve our wellbeing goals in schools?

• We value everyone’s contribution to the school, underplaying hierarchies and promoting a shared vision;
  
• We help people to manage their workload better;
  
• We show appreciation of everyone who contributes to the good running of the school;
  
• We tell everyone as much of what’s going on as much of the time as possible, and help people through times of change, even when it might not directly concern them;
  
• We have strategies in place to support people unobtrusively when they are experiencing difficulties;
  
• We help people to find the appropriate slot that work should play in their lives;
  
• We focus on the core business of the school, and show how everyone can play a part in achieving it;
  
• And we demonstrate to everyone how the school is getting better at achieving it;
  
• We pledge that everyone who works here will leave in some way better off than they came.

Advancing wellbeing in a school changes lives. It puts people at the heart of the school. Outcome targets may be with us forever, and teachers suffer some of the highest rates of work-related stress. Mental health issues cost UK employers some £26 billion each year.

Your staff are always your most valuable resource. Look after them.

Nigel Gann is an education consultant, a wellbeing facilitator, and author of Targets for Tomorrow's Schools (Routledge) - www.hamdoneducation.co.uk

A longer version of this article appeared in “School Leadership Today”, V3.2, July 2011