Adopting the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter at your school

The Education Support Network’s report in October 2020 highlighted that 89% of senior leaders said they were feeling stressed, while 31% of education professionals reported working more than 51 hours each week.

Almost a third of education professionals said they’d experienced a mental health issue in the last academic year and 38% felt the organisational culture at their school had a negative impact on their health and wellbeing. More than half (57%) wouldn’t feel comfortable disclosing unmanageable stress to their employer.

While a lot of this data was captured when schools were under a lot of pressure when reopening in 2020, we do know that many of these measures were being flagged as a problem prior to the pandemic.

The good news is that the government is taking this very seriously and has this year launched the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, which delivers a powerful blueprint for schools which will undoubtedly, if applied, have a big positive impact.

Taking responsibility

It’s great to see a number of organisations, including the Department for Education, trade unions, school trusts and professional experts in mental health, such as Mind, getting on board with the charter.

It starts with a definition of what wellbeing actually is: “A state of complete physical and mental health that is characterised by high-quality social relationships.”

Knowing what we’re dealing with is really important. I’d highlight that the last bit of that definition is of great importance - the relationships we have are critical in our own sense of wellbeing, and that also relates very closely with the relationships we have in school and particularly with school leaders.

Critically, the charter sets out some principles of shared understanding about wellbeing, including everyone's roles and responsibilities. It makes it clear that everyone needs to take responsibility, from the government and the DfE, to every single member of staff in a school managing their own wellbeing.

Principles of shared understanding

That’s one of the reasons why this new charter is so important - it makes clear, and publicly sets out what everyone’s responsibilities are, including for the DfE so that there can be accountability.

While wellbeing is subjective, for example one person's stress is another's performance pressure, it can be measured and we will be able to use Office for National Statistics data to benchmark outcomes and monitor progress.

It’s important we do monitor progress because wellbeing has multiple benefits in our sector. Not only is it morally right to take responsibility for employee wellbeing, it’s also important for health and safety and it will contribute to better recruitment, retention and bringing more talent into the sector. It’s also vital for pupil wellbeing that the adults they see and are around have good wellbeing. Ultimately good employee wellbeing is a vital part of school improvement, healthy, well staff will perform and ensure children get the quality education they need.

Wellbeing is also incredibly holistic with so many things that can influence our wellbeing - the relationships inside and outside of work, the environment we’re in, the sense of purpose we have and the security we feel. The charter is focused on how we can ensure our culture and environment in school is addressing wellbeing.

The DfE have made some strong commitments too, to continue to help the sector to drive down unnecessary workload, champion flexible working and support breaking down the stigma around talking about mental health. Ofsted have also made commitments to take wellbeing into account during inspections.

Blueprint for your school

The charter gives everyone responsibility and therefore it’s key when designing your school’s policy that you start with a whole school strategy including culture and climate, leader capabilities and individual responsibilities.

There are a number of vital elements that need to be factored in, including workload management and the effectiveness of those in management positions - the adage is true that people don’t leave their job, they leave their boss.

The charter also gives a blueprint for ensuring proper support through difficult times, and in fact that’s one area where anecdotally we’ve seen a lot of change during the pandemic. For many senior leadership teams, the pandemic has increased the time spent getting to know staff and their challenges both at home and at work, something many will not be rolling back.

Any new approach should also include a clear communication policy and give staff a voice in decision-making. But equally not all decisions can be made by committee, so it can be useful to have a discussion about the kinds of decisions that can have a lot of consultation, and the kinds of decisions that can’t.

The charter

Find out more about how your school can adopt and adapt the charter to hold all stakeholders to account, set a whole school strategy, focus on skilling up leaders and make everyone’s responsibilities clear - listen to author, coach, mentor and former director of people at United Learning, Mandy Coalter’s session at Access All Areas here.