The Research Files Episode 105: A whole school approach to teacher wellbeing

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Hello and welcome to Episode 105 of our series The Research Files. I’m Jo Earp and, in this episode, we’re talking about a whole school approach to wellbeing. My guest is Dr Alexandra Hennessey, from the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester in the UK. Dr Hennessey and colleagues have explored how different schools in the UK have adopted the Well Schools framework – now, that’s a project started by the Youth Sport Trust in 2020. The findings of the study have been published in the journal Frontiers in Education (Hennessey et al., 2025). The team has also published 2 short reads – some school case studies on how the 10 schools are supporting wellbeing in their community, which runs through things like intent, implementation and impact; and then there’s a Well Schools Final Report Executive Summary as well (Hennessey et al., 2023). You can find links to all those documents in the transcript of this podcast over at Teacher magazine. My chat with Dr Hennessey includes how wellbeing and learning go hand-in-hand, and we’re going to focus on 2 aspects of the study in particular – the role of teacher wellbeing and, of course, the importance of that whole school approach. She also mentions at one stage INSET, and that in the UK, is staff PD, essentially, where the staff get in-service training and the pupils don’t attend on that day. I hope you enjoy the episode!

Jo Earp: Dr Alexandra Hennessey, thanks very much for joining Teacher today, from Manchester in the UK. Now, we're going to be discussing the important topic of wellbeing and a couple of things in particular, actually – there's an awful lot in the paper and, as usual, I'll put a link to the full paper in the transcript to this podcast. So, there's an awful lot in the paper that's outside of this discussion, but we'll focus on a couple of things in particular today. So, leading a whole school approach and the difference that teacher wellbeing makes to students. Before we dive into that discussion though, can you start by telling listeners a bit about your own role there at the Uni and your interest in this area of education research?

Alexandra Hennessey: So, I'm a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Manchester and I've been there a good 15-plus years now. I've been involved in a lot of school-based research throughout my career. So, my work initially focused on kind of supporting students' social-emotional development and that's progressed into looking much more at school-based intervention work and supporting learning behaviour. And the more recent work I've done has been looking specifically at wellbeing and also the role of physical activity for wellbeing. So, the work I'm going to talk to you about today is some work that's been funded and led by the Youth Sport Trust. So, their remit is very much about supporting students and supporting their physical health. But alongside that, I don't think we can talk about physical health without talking about kind of mental health and wellbeing. So, the Well Schools approach is a recent project we did evaluating kind of how schools were putting wellbeing at the forefront and whole school.

JE: Yeah. And so, you led the research and you were a co-principal investigator, I think it's called, in this research with Manchester Institute of Education colleague there, Dr Sarah McQuarrie. You've touched on that, it's about the Well Schools project, isn't it? How many schools did that involve? What kind of things did you do in terms of research and what were you seeking to explore in this particular study?

AH: So, Well Schools [it's] a program run by the Youth Sport Trust that is all about putting wellbeing at the heart of education and making it a priority. They have a lot of schools signed up. At the time when we started the work a few years back, there were about 1,000 schools. I think that's doubled or even tripled by now. But for the project, what we wanted to do was just to really zoom in on a small number of case study schools.

So, we had 10 case study schools involved and we really wanted to tell the stories of those schools. So, they were selected based on just a really diverse sample. We had secondary schools, primary schools, special education schools. We had them dotted all across the country, all with different kind of cohorts and makeups of pupils and teachers as well. So, the idea was, yeah, we get 10 very different schools, all with very different journeys in how they were kind of putting wellbeing at the forefront. Some of the schools were what they called ‘founding schools’ who were asked to join the Well Schools movement and initiative because they were already doing lots of good practice there. And some schools joined completely new because they were after just a refresh and an evolvement of their policies.

So, what we aimed to do is, basically we collected quite a lot of data in lots of different ways. The kind of rich data was the ones reported this paper about the interviews we did with school leaders and class teachers to understand kind of very practically how they were embedding Well Schools, what was working well, where the challenges were, because there were quite a lot of challenges, but what they did around that as well. 

So, it's all about kind of creating a series of case studies of good practice, but we did collect some survey data with students and with the teachers as well alongside that to look at benchmarks of wellbeing at those schools across national averages as well.

JE: Yeah, like I say, there's a lot more than we're going to talk about today. But yeah, in terms of student and teacher wellbeing, they've been described as 2 sides of the same coin, if you like – so, really closely linked and impacting on each other. Now, at Teacher we do an annual survey, and we've been running that since 2014 and the topic that is always sort of top of the list in terms of readers and listeners saying they want more support on has been teacher wellbeing. So, it's definitely a focus for us, so I want to start with that. Your research reinforced that evidence that's already there, that teacher wellbeing is integral to student outcomes as well. So, sort of like, you know, in short happier teachers equals happier students (I know that's a very simplistic way of putting it). What were the main findings on this?

AH: The fact that Well Schools was whole school and thinking about teacher wellbeing alongside pupil wellbeing was one of the things that really drove us to wanting to be part of this evaluation. I've done, a lot of my other work’s very much focused on the students and sees the teacher almost as a vehicle to deliver that. So, it was really nice that this was truly whole school thinking about staff and the community around students altogether.

So, there's some really nice findings. And I think the best way of kind of delivering the findings is through the words of the teachers. And they did actually say that – one of the quotes was ‘staff are, they're fresh, they're happy, they love their job so they're going to teach better if they're in a better place’. It really came clearly through all the different schools that actually, once they were putting wellbeing at the heart, teachers felt they had more autonomy and they felt they were appreciated, there was less kind of stress and burnout and yeah, they were happier.

It was really nice to see some of the kind of approaches from kind of the senior leadership about yeah, we need to look after our teachers, you know. There are again some really nice quotations about, you know, ‘I think fundamentally as a leader, I know if people are in a good place, we're going to get the best out of them’, ‘Looking after people is good leadership’. One of the schools in particular, the headteacher is a brand new headteacher, came on and wanted to do a big kind of overhaul of how the school was working and Well Schools was just really good timing for them because it meant, ‘right, we can use this model to just reshape everything’. And she talked, ‘it has to be top down …you have to look after the teachers if you want to look after the pupils’ and that it has to filter down like that. And so, her first priority when she came in was to look after the teachers.

And again, part of the Well Schools framework was, the very first pillar is about leadership and staff wellbeing before you even do the other parts of it. And it just, yeah, it was a really usable framework, I think, for a lot of the schools. And it really gave them the … kind of offered them the opportunity to really focus on something they probably wanted to focus on but felt that there's so much onus on looking after pupil wellbeing; but now with this model, we can actually appreciate how interlinked they are and tackle these 2 things together.

JE: Yeah, it's something again that we've spoken about at Teacher before and I know I've sort of written about it in other articles on wellbeing saying, you know, you've got a pupil (in your case you call them pupils don't you, I've noticed that slight difference in language), you've got a student wellbeing policy there, have you got a staff wellbeing policy? You know, have you got something there that's a [whole school approach]? Do we know what that means? You know, are you thinking about staff wellbeing? What does that look like then in the day-to-day from the schools that you spoke to? Tell me a bit about what effective teacher wellbeing supports looked like? What are some of those initiatives? And you know, that could be one-offs. It could be quite simple things. It could be quite complex things that are regular features of the school as well, couldn't it?

AH: Yeah, so it was very, very varied. One of our goals was to tell these stories of these different schools and give examples, physical examples of practice that other schools could then pick up on from that. And what we found across all of the kind of approach to Well Schools it was so very varied. And it did start from very complex things to very just simple day-to-day things.

So, in terms of looking at the staff wellbeing – if you think about it at the top level, there was the senior leadership. So, they were prioritising it, they were making staff wellbeing roles, they were thinking about specific leadership roles and kind of a bit more dissemination of leadership, so it isn't just all coming via kind of the traditional headteacher, deputy headteacher. They were just, they were dividing up those responsibilities a little bit more. They had Wellbeing Charters that very much incorporated staff as well as students in that. So, there was some very higher up strategic kind of thinking going on about how we recognise teachers' roles, how we give them more opportunities for learning and development and support them.

And then there were more kind of a middle tier, I suppose, was thinking about on a day-to-day basis, how do they look after their teachers, how do they support their teachers, how do they reduce things like burnout? So, we have, one example, one of the schools did this ‘keep, tweak or ditch’ approach where they basically looked at all the bigger processes and did a review of those and decided, ‘Right, is this something we need? Keep it. Is this something that needs adapting? We tweak it. Or is this just, is this not effective and not useful at all, and we ditch it?’ And just the massive overhaul again of processes to look at that just to kind of really eliminate unnecessary work and any inefficient working and just to get the teachers involved in that process rather than it being just driven by a headteacher. It was very much kind of this collaborative process and getting, using staff voice as part of that as well.

There was a lot of stuff around managing workload. Some schools are having staff wellbeing days and INSET days, using time off – you can have time off to go and just look after yourself. And then there were kind of much more simple things on a day-to-day basis. So, just doing a few more wellbeing kind of activities like, you know, going to yoga, having walking clubs, walking dogs, things like that together as staff. And then to really simple things, like I think one of the examples, one of the schools had a mug and they just handed that round as like an appreciation mug; or sweets or something, just treats. Something nice like that, just to go in a really simple way of recognising when someone's done something that needs some kind of recognition or appreciation. And it's just really simple things like that. Or just being there for colleagues to have a chat about things and making time and space for that.

So, it starts from really strategic high-level stuff to just really simple, cheap every day, just, you know, just look after each other basically and recognise that each other are doing good work etcetera.

JE: Yeah, and as you said, there are lots of examples there in the paper and it's really practical. What I like about the paper is it's really practical and it shares a lot of things. So, I would encourage listeners to go have a read of the full paper and you'll see lots and lots of examples there. The other thing we talk about is the importance of context, obviously – the importance of selecting or adapting approaches based on your school context, based on the skills of staff, based on the needs of students, based on the needs of teachers. That also came through in the study, didn't it? There's no – and you've touched on that there about, so you found all kinds of different things, but there's no real sort of one-size-fits-all in this. Context is key really, isn't it?

AH: Yeah, I think that is kind of the take home message from Wells Schools – it is about finding an approach that suits that individual school and their context. So, the framework for Wells Schools was very much this overarching kind of framework of kind of key objectives or key things to do, but it wasn't prescribed, individual, very specific things. It gives lots of examples of how you could go about supporting staff wellbeing, pupil wellbeing, etcetera, all coming together under this idea of creating a well culture. But being adaptable and being flexible was very much encouraged as part of the Well Schools model.

They had their own website as well as a community of schools where they could share approaches and share good practice and any kind of opportunities and things going on. So, it was all about kind of – look, here's lots of different ways, we're not going to tell you the way, there's lots of things going on, you decide. Which (I think you're going to ask me about challenges later) it's also a challenge at the same time as being [one of the advantages] and enablers of the Well Schools models is its adaptability, but that does come with a need to really kind of strategically think about, ‘right, what is best for our school?’ And you might try things that work and things that don't, for example.

[It] requires a lot of effort and buy-in from leadership to really think about how is this going to fit within our school and how are we going to go about it and recognise it might be different. So, one of the goals from our piece of work was the 10 case study schools were schools that were doing good practice. They were the schools that were really getting on with it. And the idea and the remit of the work was to create these kind of models of good practice so another school coming into it could pick it up and go, ‘right, I'm a primary school, like this school, what have they done? What can we do?’ So, it was about sharing good practice and really communicating how the Well Schools model can work, but appreciating at the same time, this might not work for your school at the same time. So, yeah, it was very much about giving practical examples for other schools to kind of, yeah, to pick up on if they thought those things would work for them.

JE: And as you mentioned there, though, it's not all kind of like flexibility. There are definitely things there that are consistent across schools that were having a positive impact, and one of those is that whole school approach – it has to be that strategic whole school approach rather than something that's a bit ad hoc. Maybe, you know, it's happening for these people over here, but those people over there aren’t getting it. So, you did find that, and also the role of the school leader as well as sort of really driving that. You mentioned that earlier.

AH: Yeah, school leadership I think, any school-based intervention we've always found school leadership is one of the key kind of themes in terms of driving a successful intervention program. And yeah, it has to come from the top and to get the buy-in through the staff, which again, I think was another important kind of theme – for it to work well, staff needed to be on board and how the school leaders manage that, and how they talked about Well Schools was incredibly important. Again, they went about it in quite different ways. One school talked very much about, ‘well, it's what we should be doing anyway.’ So, she kind of talked about putting it in by stealth – it's an approach, it's not a new intervention, looking after the wellbeing of everyone shouldn't be seen as an add-on intervention, it's what we should be doing. So, it was kind of just embedded into everything in a more kind of stealth-based approach. Because I think, you know, there is a bit of burnout in terms of ‘not another intervention’. The 2 analogies that schools used around it [were] being basically an umbrella for which everything should come under, or a golden thread that kind of threads through all of the work. 

So, yeah, being driven by leadership, being embedded through into everything and that really was creating kind of staff buy-in and how you get the staff on board. And again, the way that suits the school and the context again was crucial to that.

JE: And how the principal, the headteacher (whatever you want to call them, whatever system you're in), how they sort of create that time and space – which I'm guessing is going to be one of the challenges, which we're going to come to in a moment. But before that, I want to take a look at the enablers. So, whatever approach you do decide to take and however you adapt that, what are those key enablers that you found from this study that will support that being a success in your context?

AH: Alongside good leadership and staff buy-in, I think they were the 2 crucial ones, but how you go about doing that was crucial and different for different schools. But yeah, really getting that collaborative process of getting the teachers all on board so they were all working together. But to enable that, I think they really did appreciate that it isn't just about the students, it is about teachers as well. So, having that side of it and being there and offering kind of support and wellbeing support and remodelling things around that, I think, again, was one of the enablers. That it isn't just focused on students, it's ‘right, we're looking after you as well now’. So that kind of fresh approach as part of the whole kind of whole school initiative to Well Schools, I think, was a real kind of enabler.

But really it was just a willingness to embed the framework is a real enabler. Just understanding what this framework is and taking the time to kind of strategically link it into everything. I mean, one of the schools said, but it isn't something new, it is just, you know, we are kind of doing this – so, we're all doing this in different ways already, looking after wellbeing, let's use this to evolve our practice rather than completely revolutionise everything. So, they talked about it just fitting quite naturally into the school processes. And because of the flexibility and adaptability that was allowed, it was more a case of, ‘right, let's just evolve these processes or tweak this here and there’. But it triggered that overall review of everything, and thinking about everything together, rather than quite compartmentalising different aspects of support and wellbeing.

So, being a kind of a framework that just allowed evolvement of the practice and refocusing and re-shifting priorities and things rather than completely revolutionising everything, I suppose, was one of the key enablers. But on the flip side of that, that comes with challenges as well.

JE: That comes with challenges. I like that, though, the idea of, you know … because it's like you've said, the idea of, oh, ‘here's another intervention’, or ‘we're going to do this framework’, or ‘we're going to do this program’, or ‘I want you to have a think about your wellbeing’. And it's like as a teacher, you're kind of like, ‘oh’, it's actually, it's part of the overwhelm, part of the overwhelm is trying to fix it sometimes. So that's really nice to hear that the schools are saying, you know what, ‘we actually do a lot of this really well and what this is going to do is enable us to evolve that’ (I love that word, ‘evolve’ that). And also sort of, I think what I'm taking from you is, we're going to sharpen our focus a little bit on – is it achieving what we want it to achieve? How can we improve it further? You know, all those kinds of things. How can we monitor it? So that's great to hear. There are challenges though, aren't there, for school leaders and teachers. Look, collaboration opportunities, time, ecosystem, sustainability. I don't know where you want to start with the challenges, but let's, yeah, let's have a chat about some of those.

AH: Yeah, the top of the list, yeah, is always time and competing priorities. I think the biggest challenge schools are having is that there is just this massive focus on the academic curriculum and Ofsted (our kind of body over in the UK that kind of monitor schools and grade schools) and their shift in focus that happens as well. But yeah, academics being the key focus. And if you're going against the grain to put your focus on wellbeing, I mean, I think one of the schools described it as ‘you just need to be brave and do it’. You need to just embrace it and just go for it. You can't do it half-heartedly.

So, you know … and then just going with, it pays dividends at the end. So, one of the schools talked about, you know, it feeds down so much. If you're looking after wellbeing, then everything else starts to fall into place. And they were an example of that. But having the kind of the courage to just do that and not focus on, not have that big priority on academics leading everything, going ‘right, well, if we sort out wellbeing, everything else will happen’. And then they talked about how parents were just talking about how the school was … they were more focused on if their kid is happy at school rather than how they’re doing academically; that became the focus for everybody.

So yeah, being brave and focusing on wellbeing at a time where academics have been so pushed on the priorities for school there, I think was one of the biggest kind of challenges for Well Schools. But again, it's the time. It does really need the teachers to sit down, senior leadership and just look at, ‘right, how are we going to work this and how are we going to work it best for our school?’ And while that creates lots of opportunity and enabling, it does just, it requires quite a lot of strategic input. It isn't just something you can take off the shelf and run. You do need to sit and really strategise and think about how it will work for your particular context. But once you get over that hurdle, it was, as I said, it was paying dividends for the schools.

JE: And I'm thinking for those people listening, thinking, okay, what are we doing here? There are probably loads of things you're already doing. And, like we were saying about the feedback from some of the schools about ‘we're doing a lot of this really well’. And so, it might just be a case of having to look at that and sort of sharpen your focus on that a bit more and think about how you can evolve it rather than, like you say, starting from scratch, which does feel overwhelming; but that message of being brave. The other thing, just to point out again, the study encompasses student wellbeing as well. So, there's tons in the research paper that you've published that I'll put a link into. So, there's lots there, lots of good reading. We've just touched on a small part of that study today. So, thanks so much for sharing your expertise and findings with The Research Files on that today, Alex. Before you go though, if there is sort of one key takeaway from all this, what's your message for the K-12 school leaders and teachers out there?

AH: I think it has to be that – it’s ‘be brave’. You know, if you're going to support wellbeing, it needs to drive from the top, it needs to be the priority. And if you've got that bravery and courage, it will just filter down into everything else and pay real good dividends overall.

That’s all for this episode. Thanks very much for listening. If you enjoyed this one, please take a quick moment to hit follow on your podcast app (if you haven’t already) and leave us a review. Both of those things help more people like you to find our podcast, and they are a really big support for the Teacher team, so thanks for doing that. We’ll be back with a new episode very soon! 

References

Hennessey, A., MacQuarrie, S., Pert, K., Bagnall, C., Squires, G., Verity, L., Mason, C., Ozturk, M. Gupta, S., Mills-Webb, K., & Mottishaw, F. (2023.) An evaluation of the Well Schools community whole school approach for supporting teacher and student wellbeing: a mixed-method ecological case study approach. Final report to Youth Sport Trust. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/SWM25 

Hennessey, A., MacQuarrie, S., Pert, K., Mason, C., & Verity, L. (2025). Advocating for a holistic culture of school wellbeing: An evaluation of the Well Schools whole school approach to pupil and teacher wellbeing. Frontiers in Education, 10, Article 1675773. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1675773