Embedding Wellbeing in the Whole School Culture

Why Wellbeing? The Wider Context

Wellbeing has been working its way up the agenda in both education and business/industry over the past twenty years. In education there is a growing recognition that there is little point sending A* students to top universities and on into the workplace if they are not going to cope with the wider challenges that they are going to face there. At the same time the importance of wellbeing has begun to impact on business thinking beyond its traditional habitat of the H.R. Department. Over this time the wider shift in the economy, from the industrial to the digital, has moved the conversation from ‘Health & Safety at work’ (the physical) to ‘Workplace Wellness’ (the mental).

For many years mental health has been a bit of a taboo. Slowly, society is beginning to grasp the scale of its mental health problem. According to research published in The Lancet in 2018, there were an estimated 970 million people globally with mental disorders of whom 264 million were affected by depression.[1] It is generally agreed that the workplace is a significant contributory factor to issues relating to mental health – indeed the World Health Organization recently re-classified ‘Burnout’ as a disease linked to chronic stress at work.[2]

Tragically, Hong Kong has one of the highest rates of teenage suicide in the world. Over 120 children and teenagers in the city killed themselves between 2006 and 2015 – accounting in some years for 30% of unnatural deaths for that age group[3]. Great awareness of mental health issues means that rates are falling but each year there are still cases - indeed the educational community here is still reeling from a Year 11 student taking her own life only last week.

Given the wider and local contexts, it is not difficult to see why Kellett has placed a particular emphasis on Wellbeing education which has become enshrined in our whole-school programme Positively Kellett.

Positively Kellett

Kellett School is part of the ‘Positive Education’ movement which is based on the research into the benefits of ‘Positive Psychology’ developed by Professor Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. At Kellett we follow a bespoke curriculum in which all students have one lesson a week in which they are explicitly taught the skills of Positive Psychology and the science of wellbeing. The aim of this is to foster the attitudes and habits that will enable them to cope with the stresses and strains of life and to thrive in the fast-changing world of the mid-C21. Furthermore, there is evident that Positive Education delivers better educational outcomes for students[4]. The areas covered include: a growth mindset, a healthy body, a healthy mind, effective communication, positive sense of self, respectful relationships, and resilience. At Kellett, this approach is not limited to our students but also extends to our teaching and non-teaching staff.

Embedding Wellbeing into your School

So, what do schools need to do to embed a wellbeing programme into their school?

1.     Have an embedded long-term commitment to Wellbeing

Wellbeing is a top priority at Kellett – it is one of our “skyscrapers”, areas where we devote significant resources and effort and to which we have a long-term commitment. Positive Education is not just a fad – it is fundamental to what we are as an organisation. Clarity over its status ensures that we don’t bounce from one ad hoc initiative to another; but, instead, have a coherent, embedded programme of development.

2.     Involve Everyone in the Programme

Staff across the school, from teachers to our administrative team, undertook training (all staff trained at a basic level, 25 trained at a deeper level, two became trainers) led by Geelong Grammar School’s Institute of Positive Education, driving the ethos and energy throughout the school. Sustainability is secured through our advisory team who steer the long-term strategy, and implementation teams in each of the three schools who lead the improvement plans. Heads of the Positive Education Curriculum have been appointed in each of our three schools to assure quality and champion the work in this area.

3.     Build Wellbeing into the Week

Time is one of our most valuable resources, so by setting aside time each week for Positive Education, we are saying as an organisation that we believe in investing in the personal growth and development of those in our community.

Student wellbeing is also supported through our weekly Feel Good Fridays, which are designed to send students into the weekend feeling great. They have a tremendous impact on our students at both Prep and Senior level.

4.     Hold community events

Schools, by their very nature, are places where people come together and thus, they are a focus not only for students but also for the wider community. Our Positive Education programme is for all of our stakeholders. By bringing together students, staff and parents in a variety of educational and participatory wellbeing events has meant that we have developed a shared vocabulary that has benefited our whole community.

5.     Use regular questionnaires and follow-up

At Kellett, we regularly ask our students and staff how they are doing, and if there is anything that we can do to better support them. It is important that we are prepared to listen, spot patterns, and embrace suggestions for change.

The key to wellbeing questionnaires is not just about data collection and analysis – it is also about action. We actively follow up in a non-judgemental way. Any student or staff-member who self-reports that their personal wellbeing is at a level less than 5/10 is offered counselling support. We need to encourage people to break the silence and to talk about the challenges that they are facing and to give them the support that they need.

6.     Create a culture of support

Professor Martin Seligman flipped the traditional question of ‘What is wrong with you?’ to ‘What is right with you?’.

Building on this work, Kellett adopts a strengths-based approach to working with our students and staff, which understands success and achievements in terms of character strengths, rather than flaws. It is an approach that focuses on life-long growth and development. This is reflected in our Staff Appraisal system which focuses on identifying areas where individuals can develop their professional practice and enhance their skills.

The impact of this has been a change of culture within our staff who are also now more understanding of one another, creating a culture of support throughout our organisation.

Positively Kellett in Lockdown: How we supported Students’ Wellbeing

When we moved to home learning we endeavoured to translate our usual structures to the online environment. We built our regular Form Tutor meeting into the programme with Tutors checking in with their Tutor Groups every day via Zoom. This proved helpful for pre-empting problems and enabled swift response as a school. Also, the Wellbeing Team continued to offer one-to-one video-conference “check ins” (counselling sessions) to those students reporting negatively on the regular questionnaires.

We continued to hold wellbeing events with our regular ‘Feel Good Fridays’ moving online with events such as a lunchtime ‘Open Mic’ competition with participants around the world contributing to the live streamed event.

Positively Kellett in Lockdown: How we supported Staff Wellbeing

Social distancing rules in Hong Kong meant that staff were working from home. Whilst it was undoubtedly more difficult to support staff when working remotely, we continued to hold online events, such as a weekly Pub Quiz, to bring the school teaching community together. We also continued to monitor staff wellbeing with regular questionnaires, and counsellors following up on those self-reporting low levels of wellbeing.

Positively Kellett in Lockdown: How we supported Parents’ Wellbeing

Given the important place that schools hold in expat communities, it was understandable that many parents turned to the school when facing the undoubted pressures that the Covid-19 school closures and lockdowns brought. Many were trying to balance working from home with supporting home learning; many were worried about their jobs; and many were worried about their children’s education, especially those in crucial examination years.

In these circumstances we realised that it was important that the school not only communicated well and often, but also provided a listening ear. Parents commented that they valued that someone from the school took time to contact them. Many simply wanted the opportunity to just talk.

Key Lessons learned:

Over the course of the closure there were three key lessons learned about the wellbeing issues that we were facing as a school:

1.     The normal issues are still there: Schools play a significant role in supporting young people in normal times – these issues don’t just disappear because the school is closed.

2.     Beware the long-standing issues that take on a new complexion: Take, for example, the student who is on the verge of being a school refuser with anxiety issues who is now in a situation that allows him to be absent from school for a sustained period of time.

3.     The new Coronavirus-related issues: Covid-19 threw up a whole range of anxieties and practical issues with which the school counselling team had to deal including anxiety about medical and financial matters, cancelled family events, isolation and the impact of ‘cabin fever’.

One of the key lessons was that it was important to listen to the community. Extended school closures were unchartered territory for all concerned and our questionnaire responses told us that over a third of our secondary students felt overloaded with work. In response we decided to change the structure of the school day, shortening lessons from 50 minutes to 40 so that we could fit all of the ‘live teaching’ via Zoom into the mornings. This meant that afternoons were more flexible allowing students and staff to get some time away from their screens and enabling families to take exercise together.

Hopefully we are now through the worst in Hong Kong, but, looking back on the past year, it is clear that our commitment to wellbeing was one of things that supported our community through this most challenging time.

The next chapter

Positively Kellett has reached a level of maturity where it is an established part of our community life, so it is a very fitting time for reflection and a major review. With this in mind, we have recently established a Positively Kellett Advisory Group which draws on the expertise of our wider community, involving a group of parents and others in Hong Kong who have professional expertise in the area of Wellbeing. This group will ensure that our programme continues to evolve and remain fit for purpose over the coming years.

Much of this article was published in the Independent School Management Plus Magazine February 2021 pp.9-10

Notes

[1] ‘Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017’, The Lancet 2018; 392: 1789–858.

[2] ’Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of Diseases’ https://www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/burn-out/en/ accessed 16/06/2020.

[3] ‘Hong Kong children overwhelmed by academic pressure, with suicide accounting for a third of young unnatural deaths, government review of Coroner’s Court cases reveals’ South China Morning Post 31 May 2019 accessed 18/11/2020.

[4] M.E.P. Seligman et al. ‘Positive education: positive psychology and classroom interventions’ Oxford Review of Education Vol. 35, No. 3, June 2009, pp. 293–311