Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is right to argue that belonging is central to young people’s wellbeing and to focus as strongly on wellbeing as academic success. To realise this vision and enable young people to thrive, however, we need to recognise that relationships lie at the heart of wellbeing and embed wellbeing-informed practice in schools – and the education system more widely.
Sarah White is Co-founder of the Relational Wellbeing Collaborative and Honorary Professor of International Development and Wellbeing, University of Bath.
In her speech to school leaders in Birmingham on November 7 2024, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson recognised that wellbeing is as important as – and complementary to – young people’s academic achievement. Her policies aim to address this: targeting teachers’ workloads and wellbeing, renewing failing school buildings, providing specialist mental health support, building connections between schools and community, and supporting schools to be fully inclusive of students with SEND.
So far so good. But what is it that ties these policies together? What is it that makes them ‘belong’? If we are to achieve the vision of thriving young people, we must be clear about how we understand wellbeing. We need then to adopt a consistent yet reflective strategy, based on that understanding, to promote wellbeing at a whole school level.
Our research over more than twenty years in different countries around the world echoes Phillipson’s insight that relationship is at the heart of wellbeing. Yet it goes further than this. We show that wellbeing emerges through the dynamic interaction of what people can be and do, how they think and feel, and – critically – how they connect and relate to one another. This last point acknowledges that individuals need others on whom they can rely, which is widely accepted amongst wellbeing theorists. However, it goes beyond this - to recognise in addition that communities thrive when they welcome diversity, foster equity and enable agency. Wellbeing is not just a matter of individual attitudes and behaviour, but is fundamentally shaped by the context in which people find themselves. To distinguish this from other views, we call ours ‘a relational approach to wellbeing’, or just ‘relational wellbeing’ (RWB).
To enable young people and school communities to thrive, we need to embed practice that is based on this view of wellbeing at a whole school level. Such wellbeing-informed practice has three key elements. The first, and simplest, is to have specific initiatives to promote wellbeing, such as observing World Mental health day, or celebrating student and staff birthdays. These not only help people to feel good, but also make visible and tangible the commitment to wellbeing at a whole school level.
Second, wellbeing-informed practice means ensuring that policies, structures and processes are relational: they should build positive connections. For example, an international school in Hong Kong is designed around hubs ‘to make a big school small.’ In the primary school all classes in each year have rooms off a single common area, which includes a small kitchen and some space for shared activities. In the senior school the hubs are for subject areas. For students this gives a sense of home and belonging, which is especially important in the early years. For teachers it means there are always colleagues close by to help each other out.
The third aspect of being wellbeing-informed is person-centred practice, which treats people as individuals rather than just applying abstract rules. This enables people to flourish. In the Hong Kong school, for example, the head teacher stands at the school gates at the beginning and end of most school days, welcoming or bidding farewell by name to students and their parents. Discipline involves taking the student aside and seeking to understand why they had behaved in a problematic way. Punishment is avoided whenever possible. Instead, the aim is to get students to understand what was inappropriate in what they did, so that they are motivated and empowered to act differently in future.
The resources available to an international school and the scope it has for setting its own policies and priorities are clearly very different to many British state schools. Just as individuals’ wellbeing is affected by their context, so the capacity of schools to thrive is shaped by the many systems – cultural, economic, social and political – which flow in and through them. Not least is the impact of the wider education system and all the cross-currents within it. Recent changes to systems of inspection and the review of curriculum and assessment will hopefully shift this towards a more wellbeing-enabling environment. The position of each school within these multiple systems, and its skill in navigating them, will have a major impact on the path it can take towards enabling its students and staff to thrive.
Nevertheless, the basic concept and principles of practice remain the same. The foundation is the concept of relational wellbeing, emerging through the interaction of what staff and students can be and do, how they think and feel, and how they relate and connect. This can be assessed both at an individual and at a whole school level. To apply this concept there are the three complementary principles of wellbeing-informed practice: specific wellbeing initiatives, relational structures and processes, and person-centred practice.
Within these general guides, each school or trust will need to develop its own strategy, at its own pace, and in relation to its own wider community. It will need to involve students themselves, parents, governors and staff, to ensure there is general buy-in, to identify priorities and pathways for action, and to monitor and reflect on how things are going. It won’t be possible to work on everything at once, and some things may take a few attempts to get right, but even a small difference in the right direction is worth making.
Working on wellbeing can itself increase energy and heighten motivation. And if the government adopts a similar approach in its wider education strategy, who knows what might be possible!
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the IPR, nor of the University of Bath.
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