Passionate about Improving pupil outcomes through better staff wellbeing
Professional Development with Clarity in Education
Promoting Staff Wellbeing
Time for a renewed focus
Background
Teaching has always been an incredibly rewarding profession. However, it’s also one of the most challenging.
Responding to the growing perception in recent years that there is an ongoing deterioration of wellbeing levels amongst school staff, a number of charities, teaching unions and government bodies have carried out research in order to get to the heart of the issue and determine the extent of any crisis. Wherever you look, the results have been stark.
In November 2023, a study carried out by the mental health charity Education Support found that teacher wellbeing is currently at a five-year low, with stress, insomnia and burnout all rising. In 2017, 67 per cent of schoolteachers were reporting feelings of stress – by 2023, that figure had risen sharply to 78 per cent.
A workforce survey carried out in Spring 2024 by the NASUWT (found that some teachers had been driven to the point of suicide by the stress of the job. Among 12,000 teachers, 23 per cent reported drinking more alcohol, 12 per cent the use of or increased use of antidepressants, and 3 per cent said they had self-harmed as a result of their work.
By the DFE’s own figures, a third of teachers who trained 5 years ago have already left the profession.
Beneath these headline figures are countless individual stories of stress, anxiety and depression. The tragic case of Ruth Perry, the headteacher who committed suicide following an OFSTED inspection has rightly brought further scrutiny to the debate and political leaders are beginning to recognise the need to take action.
More than a moral imperative
The impact of poor staff wellbeing extends beyond the personal cost to individuals. Increased levels of staff illness require already stretched school budgets to find additional money for staff absence cover. Where schools can’t afford to employ supply teachers to cover absence, they are regularly forced into more extreme solutions such as the doubling up of classes or requiring senior leaders to put their own leadership tasks to one side and teach. As a result, these ‘solutions’ create further levels of workload and stress on school staff teams and a negative impact on the quality of teaching and learning.
When staff leave the profession, additional recruitment is needed, bringing further cost and impact on budgets and leadership time.
Professional associations working on behalf of those who work in school, rightly seek political solutions to the issues affecting their members. They also support their members when unreasonable loads are placed on their shoulders.
However, in my experience, the vast majority of schools and leadership teams actually want their staff to have high levels of wellbeing and a good work-life balance. Unfortunately, given the seemingly endless list of responsibilities faced by schools, a thorough focus on improving staff wellbeing does not get the attention it deserves. Superficial solutions such as the odd ‘wellbeing day’ or vague commitments to ask ‘wellbeing questions’ as part of performance management are often added to school’s improvement plans but the impact of such measures, if actually measured, rarerly reveals that any change has taken place.
