Improving well-being at school
Since well-being has many facets, improving students’ well-being in schools requires a whole-school approach, involving both teachers and parents.
Schools should provide lessons focused on the responsible use of the Internet, the need to adopt a healthy lifestyle and how to prevent or cope with health problems, in collaboration with those involved, including health and social services, local authorities and civil society organisations.
Facts & figures
About 60% of school students report getting very tense when they study.[1]
Just over 60% of girls and 40% boys say they feel very anxious about doing tests at school, even when they are well prepared.[2]
Over 70% of parents say they would choose to send their children to a school with below-average exam results if students were happy there.[3]
What is well-being?
Well-being is the experience of health and happiness. It includes mental and physical health, physical and emotional safety, and a feeling of belonging, sense of purpose, achievement and success.
Well-being is a broad concept and covers a range of psychological and physical abilities. Five major types of well-being are said to be:
- Emotional well-being – the ability to be resilient, manage one’s emotions and generate emotions that lead to good feelings
- Physical well-being – the ability to improve the functioning of one’s body through healthy eating and good exercise habits
- Social well-being – the ability to communicate, develop meaningful relationships with others and create one’s own emotional support network
- Workplace well-being – the ability to pursue one’s own interests, beliefs and values in order to gain meaning and happiness in life and professional enrichment
- Societal well-being – the ability to participate in an active community or culture.
Overall well-being depends on all these types of functioning to an extent.[4]
“Having meaning and purpose is integral to people’s sense of well-being. Well-being involves far more than happiness, and accomplishments go far beyond test success.”[5]
Why is well-being important at school?
Well-being is important at school because schools have an essential role to play in supporting students to make healthy lifestyle choices and understand the effects of their choices on their health and well-being. Childhood and adolescence is a critical period in the development of long-term attitudes towards personal well-being and lifestyle choices. The social and emotional skills, knowledge and behaviours that young people learn in the classroom help them build resilience and set the pattern for how they will manage their physical and mental health throughout their lives.
Schools are able to provide students with reliable information and deepen their understanding of the choices they face. They are also able to provide students with the intellectual skills required to reflect critically on these choices and on the influences that society brings to bear on them, including through peer pressure, advertising, social media and family and cultural values.
There is a direct link between well-being and academic achievement and vice versa, i.e. well-being is a crucial prerequisite for achievement and achievement is essential for well-being. Physical activity is associated with improved learning and the ability to concentrate. Strong, supportive relationships provide students with the emotional resources to step out of their intellectual ‘comfort zone’ and explore new ideas and ways of thinking, which is fundamental to educational achievement.
Well-being is also important for developing important democratic competences. Positive emotions are associated with the development of flexibility and adaptability, openness to other cultures and beliefs, self-efficacy and tolerance of ambiguity, all of which lie at the heart of the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture.
What are the challenges?
One of the challenges of trying to promote young people’s well-being in school is the multi-faceted nature of well-being. There are a number of different types of well-being, all of which need to be promoted to some extent to create an overall sense of well-being in a person. So, it is not possible to improve students’ well-being at school through single interventions or activities. Rather it requires the development of a ‘culture’ of well-being throughout the whole school and the active involvement of the whole staff, teaching and non-teaching, which can be difficult to achieve.
The promotion of well-being may sometimes appear to conflict with other school priorities, such as academic standards. Unreasonably high expectations, a regime of constant testing or an over-emphasis on the importance of academic performance may actually undermine student well-being.
In many cases schools do not have the freedom to make the changes to school life which might most benefit student well-being. They may have little control, for example, over formal examinations and tests, the content of curricula, the length of the school day or the physical school environment.
Nor have schools control over the many out-of-school influences on student well-being. What happens in the home and the family, local communities or social media can have as much, if not more, influence on student well-being as anything in school.
Finally, developing a sense of well-being in students is made all the more difficult when school staff themselves do not have a positive sense of well-being. Well-being at work is strongly related to stress. Stress at work is related to workload, quality of professional relationships, level of autonomy, clarity about one’s role, availability of support and the opportunity to be involved in changes which affect one’s professional life. High levels of stress can lead to demotivation, lack of job satisfaction and poor physical and mental health, which has a knock-on effect on students’ own well-being.
How can schools get active?
Addressing student well-being at school begins with helping students feel they are each known and valued as an individual in her or his own right, and that school life has a meaning and purpose for them. This can be achieved in a variety of small ways, the cumulative effect of which can have a very powerful influence on students’ sense of well-being. These include:
- providing opportunities for all members of the school community to participate in meaningful decision-making in school, e.g. through consultations, opinion surveys, referenda, electing class representatives, student parliaments, focus groups, in-class feedback on learning activities, and an element of student choice in relation to topics taught and teaching methods used;
- developing a welcoming environment where everyone at school can feel supported and safe through access to meaningful activities, e.g. clubs, societies, interest groups and associations dealing with issues of concern to young people, including health;
- taking steps to reduce the anxiety students feel about examinations and testing through the introduction of less stressful forms of assessment, e.g. formative assessment, peer assessment and involving students in the identification of their own assessment needs;
- using teaching methods that contribute to a positive classroom climate and well-being, e.g. cooperative learning, student-centred methods, self-organised time, outdoor activities;
- finding curriculum opportunities to talk about well-being issues with students, e.g. healthy eating, exercise, substance abuse, positive relationships;
- integrating democratic citizenship and education for intercultural understanding into different school subjects and extra-curricular activities, e.g. openness to other cultures in Religious Education, knowledge and critical understanding of human rights in Social Science, empathy in Literature;
- introducing student-led forms of conflict management and approaches to bullying and harassment, e.g. peer mediation, restorative justice;
- improving the physical environment of the school to make it more student-friendly, e.g. new furniture and fittings, carpeted areas, appropriate colour schemes, safe toilet areas, recreational areas;
- encouraging healthier eating by providing healthy options in the school canteen, e.g. avoiding high amounts of sugar, saturated fats and salt;
- working with parents to enhance students’ achievement and sense of purpose in school, e.g. on healthy food, safe internet use and home-school communications.
Individual initiatives like these can be brought together at the whole-school level through a policy development process which ‘mainstreams’ well-being as a school issue. This means giving attention to the potential effects of new policies on individual well-being - of students, teachers and others. Addressing student well-being at school always goes hand in hand with action to protect the health and well-being of teachers and other staff at school.
[1] OECD (2017). PISA 2015 Results (Volume III), p.40. Students’ Well-Being. Paris, France: OECD Publishing.
[3] Cowburn & Blow, ‘Wise up - Prioritising wellbeing in schools’
[4] Psychology Today, January 2019.
[5] Hargreaves & Shirley (2018), ‘Well-being and Success. Opposites that need to attract’.
Resources on Improving well-being at school
Related schools projects
Address: Martvili Municipality. The village of Inchkhuri
Country: Georgia
Project: Twelve jurors
Working language during the project:
- Georgian
- English
Themes of the Council of Europe project “FREE to SPEAK, SAFE to LEARN - Democratic Schools for All” covered:
- Making children’s and students’ voices heard
- Addressing controversial issues
- Improving well-being at school
Competences from the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) addressed and where / how they were integrated:
- Valuing democracy, justice, fairness, equality and the rule of law
Students learned the rule of law while working on a constitution and historical document. They independently prepared presentations on the rule of law and posters depicting that all are equal before the law. - Self-efficacy
Students spoke at a mock trial and read a monologue in front of an audience which promoted a sense of self-confidence. - Autonomous learning skills
The students independently studied the current legislation and historical document on The Treaty of Georgievsk. It was a bilateral treaty concluded between the Russian Empire and the east Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti on 24 July 1783. These two documents were compared. Conclusions were prepared and a trial was held with the participation of twelve jurors.
Target group age range:
- 11-15
- 15-19
Level of education:
- Lower secondary education
- Upper secondary education
Short description of the project:
A short-term educational project was organised at school, within the framework of which a mock trial was held with the participation of 12 jurors. The mock trial was a role play. The students selected a historical period when the state changed its political orientation. Students explored democratic principles and current legislation in line with the historical past and noted which rights of society were violated when a single decision was made. In the initial phase of the project, the students explored the characteristics of a democratic society, outlining its principal characteristics. These characteristics had been present in earlier periods and could be used for assessing the epoch when the state changed its political orientation and no longer took the public interest into account.
Various departments were integrated in the project: Department of Georgian Language and Literature, Department of Social Sciences in the form of various disciplines: History, Georgian citizenship, IT technologies. At the initial stage of the project, several parents who work for the courts were invited to the school. The parents introduced the students to the courts’ work processes and peculiarities. The meeting was interactive in nature. In the first phase of the project, students were divided into groups. The students independently researched and studied the current Constitution of Georgia. They also researched and studied the Treaty of Georgievsk. It was a bilateral treaty concluded between the Russian Empire and the east Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti on July 24, 1783. The treaty established eastern Georgia as a protectorate of Russia, which guaranteed its territorial integrity and the continuation of its reigning Bagrationi dynasty in return for prerogatives in the conduct of Georgian foreign affairs.
The two documents were compared and presentation material was prepared. In the second stage, students explored the historical period of King Erekle II and prepared presentation material. The students involved in the project were divided into two main groups – the "prosecution" and the "defence". At the next stage, the project management team selected 12 jurors. The parents who worked in the field of law were invited to the school. 12 jurors were introduced to their rights and responsibilities at the mock trial. The students jointly developed the criteria used for the mock trial. The criteria indicated the rights and responsibilities of members of the court. The groups involved in the project selected the speakers and started preparing for the trial. Arguments and evidence for the defence and the prosecution were jointly developed. The mock trial was held at the final meeting. The defence and the prosecution set out their arguments. Discussions were held which led to controversy. The participating parties made presentations to the 12 jurors and presented their views. The 12 jurors gave their own verdict. The project organiser selected several students who did sketches and made comics about the mock trial. These were later hung in the school lobby.
Representatives of the local judiciary, school council representatives and parents with a legal education were invited to the mock trial at the final stage. At the mock trial, the students presented a short presentation on the relevant articles of the current Constitution and the relevant articles of the Georgievsky Treaty. The mock trial then examined the case of a historical figure - King Erekle II. The students briefly reviewed his achievements. The prosecution and the defence presented their case against and for King Erekle and his ‘crime’.
Twelve jurors examined the arguments used during the discussion / debate and made a decision under the current Constitution of Georgia, which was communicated to the parties to the mock trial. Representatives of the local district court structure and parents assessed the extent to which the students followed the processes of an actual trial, how correctly and validly they presented their arguments either for the defence or the prosecution. The verdict handed down by the twelve jurors was also assessed.
The school council representatives decided this activity, or similar activities should be continued at the school. Students will research historical events that could be offered to the school’s elementary students for conducting a mock trial next semester. Once again, the school will invite experienced judges, attorneys, and lawyers to share their practices with the school community.
Aims/objectives
- Identify positive ways for resolving conflict.
- Familiarity with the judiciary and understanding the role of the judiciary in a democratic society.
- Develop students' independent, critical thinking skills.
- Develop their ability to take responsibility for their own decisions.
Expected results/outcomes
- Students gained experience working with legislative documents.
- Students realised the role and importance of the judiciary in resolving problematic issues.
Changes
- Experience in teamwork with responsibility sharing.
- Social experience in collaboration and problem solving.
Challenges you faced
- Increase student motivation in pandemic conditions.
- Low technological skills.
- Develop accurate indicators and criteria for jurors.
Time-frame of the project:
- The project lasted for two months
Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:
- Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture
- Living Democracy - manuals for teachers
- Democratic governance of schools
- Managing controversy
- We CAN!
