March 2019

Giving feedback to schools

Since the last update, a great many hours have been spent tapping away at the keyboard, entering data. However, the hours of tedium now seem worthwhile, as we are getting ready to feed back some of our findings to schools. We have a wide range of data, including whether students have ever (and weekly over the course of the study) asked for and/or received help for a mental health problem. We also have a rating of students' perceptions of their socioeconomic position, in terms of their family's position in UK society and their position in the school. We have YP-CORE, SDQ and RCADS-25 data - the SDQ at baseline and 6-month follow-up (given its 6-month span) and the YP-CORE and RCADS-25 at baseline, weekly for four more weeks and then again at 6-month follow-up. We have also asked students each week and at 6-month follow-up whether good or bad things have happened to them that week and provided space for them to list significant events that week and rate how good/bad and impactful they have been. I am currently trying to distill this information into a format that will be useful for schools. Students considered at immediate risk of harm to themselves or others were flagged to school safeguarding so that they could receive immediate support. In some ways this felt like one of the more directly useful aspect of the research for schools, who were often, but not always aware of certain students who were struggling. Something I am very keen to communicate back to schools is the events that students describe as being particularly good and impactful and particularly bad and impactful. These events span a range of domains, in terms of involving friends, family, hobbies, their personal health and school. I was struck, however, by how many positive and impactful events students listed as happening at school. These have included making friends on school trips, enjoying a particular lesson, speaking with a caring member of staff about losing a pet, and receiving good feedback on a report. When schools are heavily burdened with achieving academic targets and supporting student wellbeing with strained resources, they deserve, more than ever, to hear these positives from their own students.