- Registration & Payment
- Informing parents
- Sharing pupil information
- Implementing pupil survey
- Reporting back
- Staff Survey
- View All
Registration & Payment
- Can you clarify the cost per class or per year group?
For the 2022-23 academic year, the pupil survey is £300 (+ VAT) for Year Groups 5 to 6 or £400 (+ VAT) for Year Groups 7 to 11. This is per year group regardless of size or school setting and includes the Wellbeing Measurement for Schools pupil survey report which will evaluate and summarise data per year group. The staff survey costs £300 (+ VAT) for a primary school or £400 (+ VAT) for a secondary or all-through school.
- Which year groups can be surveyed?
The approach is suitable for primary and secondary schools, with age-appropriate surveys for children from Year 5 to Year 11. However, we may look in future years to develop surveys for younger children and colleges. Please let us know which year groups you would want to survey and why, to help us to understand the need going forward.
- Can Pupil Referral Units and Special Schools participate?
Unfortunately, we are not able to offer the pupil survey to PRUs, APs and Special Schools at this time.
- Can colleges participate (post 16)?
The approach is suitable for primary and secondary schools, with age-appropriate surveys for children from Year 5 to Year 11. We intend to develop college surveys in the future.
However, you may find these free resources available on the Anna Freud Centre website useful:
- What do the schools get? Is it just the pupil survey?
Schools get the following:
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Access to an online survey version, a set of validated measures assessing children’s emotional wellbeing, mental health issues, and risk and resilience factors
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Support from our team with webinars and guidance to help you
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plan your approach
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organise consent processes and data transfer
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use the online survey
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interpret and respond to your results
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A feedback report analysing survey responses from your school, and benchmarking them against comparator data
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Access to learning from the research undertaken as part of this project, which will be looking into the use of mental health and wellbeing surveys to support schools monitor wellbeing, including the feasibility of this approach
If you choose to also survey your school staff, the staff survey costs additional £300 (+ VAT) for a primary school or £400 (+ VAT) for a secondary or all-through school
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- Is the offer just available in England?
The offer is available to schools within the UK – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
- Can you please confirm the ages? I'm in Scotland so we don't work in years.
Age
England and Wales
Scotland
Northern Ireland
9-10
NC Year 5
Primary 6
P6
10-11
NC Year 6
Primary 7
P7
11-12
NC Year 7
S1 (First year)
Year 8 (1st Year)
12-13
NC Year 8
S2 (Second year)
Year 9 (2nd Year)
13-14
NC Year 9
S3 (Third year)
Year 10 (3rd Year)
- Can schools in the Republic of Ireland sign up?
In principle we would be delighted to have Irish schools involved. However, it does appear that we would need to supplement our UCL Research Ethics Committee approval with a local ethical approval (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/research/integrity/research-ethics/outside-the-uk). It is unlikely that we would have capacity to support this for schools wishing to engage in the coming academic year within our current resourcing plan.
- Is this available solely for schools or can other organisations use it e.g. youth services?
While acknowledging the importance of finding ways to seek the views of young people from a range of settings, at the current time the offer is available to schools. However, in future years we may look to extend so do let us know what your context is, and the numbers of organisations and children/young people involved, so we can build up an understanding of the need. We also offer bespoke support for education providers and other organisations.
- If several schools are part of a federation do they pay once for total year group or separately for each separate school in the federation?
If each school requires a separate report then each school should sign up and pay separately. If the federation only requires federation level data, then only one payment will be required and information from all the schools will be collated into a single report.
If the federation requires both school-level and federation-level reporting, please email us at measuringwelllbeing@annafreud.org for details about our group registration process. The payment is dependent on the size of the project in the local area and what elements of Wellbeing Measurement for Schools are required.
- Do schools use the survey at regular intervals to map progress etc.?
The survey is designed to be used annually. If a school completes the survey every year, then progress can be captured over time.
- If the survey was used in successive years would it be with the same year group or the next Year 5 group?
This would be a decision for schools to make. However, responses from individual pupils at two time points cannot be matched therefore changes in individual pupils over time cannot be tracked. Comparisons would be between the cohorts that respond to the survey at the two time points so change data would be at a school year group level, rather than an individual pupil level. It is not possible to identify the pupils who completed the survey at both time points and therefore wouldn't be able to control for potential differences in the group of pupils that completed it at the second time point.
Our recommendation is that for a regular /snap shot understanding, when the survey is next run it is done so with the next Year 5 cohort, not repeated with the Year Group that have since moved into Year 6 or beyond.
- Who should I contact to discuss the offer further?
Please email measuringwellbeing@annafreud.org in the first instance.
Informing parents
- What is the project’s purpose?
There are two purposes:
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To help schools to review and support the wellbeing of their pupils by providing schools and their partner organisations (e.g. local authorities, associated charities) with anonymised reports of survey findings
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To carry out research into the use of wellbeing surveys in schools to support the wellbeing of pupils
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- Why is my child being invited?
Your child attends a school that has agreed to take part in this project. The parents and carers of all pupils in the relevant year group(s) are being contacted with this invitation.
- What will happen if my child takes part?
Information about your child and other participating children that is already collected by your child’s school will be shared with the researchers and stored securely. The researchers will send a list of survey access codes back to the school, which will allow pupils who are taking part to access the online survey.
Your child will be invited to fill in the online survey about how they are feeling. The survey takes 15 minutes to complete on average. Here is a screenshot of the survey.
- Does my child have to take part?
No. Taking part in the study is entirely voluntary.
This project uses an opt-out model of consent from parents/carers. Pupils with opt-out consent from their parents/carers, can not participate in the survey. Your child's school must distribute hard copies or email our Parent Information Sheet to all parents and carers of the pupils in the participating year groups. After reading the Parent Information Sheet, parent/carers who are happy for their child to take part in the survey do not need to do anything.
It will be made clear to all pupils when they are given access to the online survey that they do not have to answer any questions that they don’t want to, and they do not have to take part at all if they don’t want to.
- What are the possible benefits and disadvantages of taking part?
Your child’s school will receive an anonymised report of the survey findings to help them review and support pupil wellbeing.
There are no known risks or disadvantages to taking part, but if you feel that something has gone wrong with the conduct of the research and you wish to make a complaint, please contact Nick Tait at nick.tait@annafreud.org. If you then feel that your complaint has not been handled to your satisfaction, you can also contact the Chair of the UCL Research Ethics Committee at ethics@ucl.ac.uk.
- I noticed the range of survey questions and I would like to know what contingencies are in place should you identify that my child’s responses indicate that they are at risk.
In this project, we want to be clear that neither the research team or the schools are attempting to identify whether an individual child’s responses indicate that they are at risk. The focus of our reports produced for participating schools is to help identify areas of strength and challenge for school year groups as a whole. For this reason, all schools are asked to make pupils aware that their answers will not be seen by school staff, and to remind pupils of who they can speak to if they want to talk about anything that has come up. This is clearly set out in our guidance to participating schools, including a crib sheet for school staff introducing the survey to pupils.
- Has any provision been made for supporting children should they be adversely affected by having to consider these questions?
Your understanding is correct that pupils do not have to answer the questions if they do not want to. At the beginning of the survey, they are presented with a page of information about the survey and can decide whether they want to proceed. This page also explains that they are free to stop at any time, without giving a reason. Any support that may be required to support any children who may be adversely affected by having to consider these questions would be the school’s local provision, which is made clear when the schools are administering the surveys, by reminding pupils of how to share concerns and access support if they need to.
Implementing pupil survey
- Are paper copies of the pupil survey available?
We cannot accept survey responses from pupils and staff that have been completed on paper. This is for two reasons: 1) There is clear research which shows that pupils and staff respond differently to questionnaires when they complete them on paper and when they complete them on a computer. Having a combination of the two methods of completion in a sample will add a confound into the data (make it more difficult to interpret); 2) With numerous schools participating in the project, for practical reasons we need to stick to a consistent approach. However, if you would like a copy of the pupil survey to share, you can find it here.
- What is the staff commitment needed for completing the survey and engaging in the project?
We recommend that schools nominate a main school contact who will liaise with us and who will be responsible for the administration of the pupil survey and/or staff survey.
- How long does it take to set up the pupil survey?
We suggest schools plan implementation of the survey in advance as various arrangements might be required, e.g. scheduling the survey period into the school’s calendar, booking IT suites or library computers.
You should expect that the survey completion will take a whole lesson. This includes time to introduce and explain the survey to the pupils, to answer any questions, and to get pupils set up on computers.
We suggest booking at least one additional lesson slot, to include any pupils that might miss their intended slot due to school absence.
- How do pupils access the survey?
Pupils will complete the survey online, so please ensure that the website housing the survey is not blocked by your school computer. You might want to add the survey link to your school’s ‘white list’. We recommend that you make it available either as a shortcut on the pupils’ desktops or as a link on a school’s Intranet. Please ensure that you test the questionnaire on an account that will be used by the pupils.
The survey link for the survey is: https://redcap.idhs.ucl.ac.uk/surveys/
Schools should also start thinking about what the children who will not be completing the survey will be doing during the session and what alternative activities might be made available for those who may complete the survey early in the allotted class/session.
- How is this information saved and shared with you?
Only authorised individuals in the research team who are working with schools to administer the survey will have access to pupil names and pupil ID numbers. The research team may collaborate with selected academic experts or students to analyse the anonymised data set, where such collaborations are determined to be beneficial for the purposes stated above. Pupil data will always be kept confidential and will be collected, stored and analysed using secure computer systems.
With regards to the right of access, if pupils or parents would like to know more about the categories of data about them or their child being processed, please contact the research team at measuringwellbeing@annafreud.org.
- How do I explain the survey to my pupils?
Please use the following resources to explain the survey to your pupils:
- How long will it take for pupils to complete the survey on average?
15 minutes on average (based on the example of the three questionnaires to be used with primary and secondary schools, which are Me & My Feelings, Student Life Satisfaction Scale and Student Resilience Survey).
During our piloting phase, in which we piloted the survey with a number of schools in Oldham, on average the survey took pupils 18 minutes, with the fastest pupils completing it in 10 minutes, and the slowest in 40 minutes. Please factor in time around the survey itself, however, for preparing pupils for the survey (e.g. briefing them on what the survey is and what is expected from them, logging in, etc.). You should expect this to take up an entire lesson.
- Can both pupil and staff survey be completed on iPads?
Yes. Both pupil and staff survey are forms on a web pages, so it will work fine on an iPad. However the text might be a bit small for some pupils and staff. On iPads, the survey may work better in landscape mode (rather than portrait), so the pages aren’t so narrow and the text on each line will be slightly larger.
As always, we strongly recommend that schools try the survey out using the test passwords (test1, test2… test10) on their intended hardware, whether it’s a desktop or iPad, before going ahead with the surveys.
Have a look here to see a screenshot of the survey.
- Is it ok for staff to help and support pupils while they are completing the survey, in particular with regard to EAL children or those with a lower reading age/understanding?
Yes, absolutely. Please provide whatever support you would normally to your pupils. Having supported pupils in understanding the question and response options, please ensure they are given plenty of space and time to select their answers privately (e.g. look away or move away).
Case Study - Using surveys to measure wellbeing in schools: How to get a good response rate.
- Is there identifiable info in the Wellbeing Measurement Pupil Survey?
Pupils log in using a secure access code, they do not enter any personally identifiable information. This code is unique to the child and identifies the child’s data within the data safe-haven for analysis purposes. This information is not available to individuals or schools.
Ensure that you have received the individual survey access codes for your pupils.
Make sure that the survey access codes have been downloaded and are in the right order (you may want to book admin support to get passwords in the right class or year group order). Think ahead of time about how you are going to hand out the passwords in the survey session - some prefer to print out the pupil passwords and give them out to pupils on a piece of paper or sticker (if you choose this option, print out a master list for the survey session as well).
Reporting back
- What will survey feedback reports for schools provide and how are they useful?
Once the survey period is over, the data will be analysed by our research team and we will provide schools with individual feedback reports. The feedback will go through individual schools’ data from each of the areas of the survey, including pupils’ positive wellbeing, behavioural and emotional difficulties, the presence and strength of protective factors (such as perceived support at school, home and in the community), and ability to deal with stress and manage emotions. We will benchmark schools’ own data against that of other schools to provide some sort of gauge. All feedback is at school and/or year group level to protect individual pupils’ anonymity.
The feedback to schools can usefully provide schools with a snapshot of the state of the strengths and challenges for their pupils and highlight areas to target for prevention or support. However, as the surveys can be repeated year on year, schools will also be able to see trend data (i.e. how responses from pupils in the school are changing over time) or use the data to gauge the impact of support they are providing to pupils. Eventually, schools will be able to use survey data alongside other information that they hold about their pupils (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity) to create a more nuanced picture of the psychological wellbeing and needs of their pupils.
Young people consulted in the development of Wellbeing Measurement for Schools feel that pupils should be included in discussions around the feedback, particularly to plan activities and approaches to raise awareness of strengths or difficulties the report may highlight.
Additionally, data gathered can be used to send a positive message to parents, Ofsted and governors that the school has the broader wellbeing of pupils at its core and can be used as evidence of good practice.
- When will my school receive their report?
During your registration, your school should have decided by when they would like their pupil survey report:
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end of June (register by 15th April for surveys to be completed by the end of May)
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end of August (register by 10th June for surveys to be completed by the end of July)
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end of November 2023 (register by 15th September for surveys to be completed by the end of October)
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end of January 2024 (register by 1st November for surveys to be completed by the end of December)
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end of March 2024 (register by 10th January for surveys to be completed by the end of February)
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end of April 2024 (register by 15th February for surveys to be completed by the end of March)
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- Do teachers/the school get information from the measures for individual pupils, or for the population, or both?
The information provided back to schools in the feedback reports will be at the level of the population, with the school year group being the unit of analysis. Neither the school nor teachers will see information from the wellbeing measures for individual pupils.
- If the survey flagged that a child was having mental health or wellbeing difficulties, how does this link to support for young people?
The project has been designed for children to be aware that their answers are confidential and will not be seen by their parents or teachers. The teachers facilitating the survey within a school will be provided with a crib sheet of information to prepare and read out to pupils before they undertake the survey. This will include letting pupils know about who they can contact if they would like to talk to anyone about how they are feeling.
- Are any interventions offered to address whatever is highlighted by the survey?
The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families and the Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC) are involved in the design of a range of interventions to support wellbeing and resilience in school (e.g. Education for Wellbeing, Emotional Health Check). Although interventions are not built into this particular approach, we would be happy to discuss options for schools to link with other work and bespoke CORC school support. Furthermore, the webinars/guidance in this project will include signposting to relevant resources on approaches for schools to consider in light of their feedback reports (e.g. Mentally Healthy Schools website).
Staff Survey
- Why are we doing this project?
The Evidence Based Practice Unit (EBPU) is working with your school and other schools across the UK. All staff working with children and young people at your school are being asked to complete this survey so that we can better understand staff wellbeing and staff support, as well as staff skills and confidence in supporting children and young people’s wellbeing.
The results of this survey will help us and your school to understand the wellbeing of staff at your school and some of the factors that may influence this.
- Why have I been chosen?
As you are employed in a participating school, we are asking staff to volunteer to take part in this research project.
- What does ‘taking part’ in this research project involve?
If you agree to take part, you will be asked a number of survey questions. The survey explores professional confidence and ability to support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing and the wellbeing of staff at your school.
- What are the disadvantages of taking part?
There are no known risks or disadvantages to taking part in this questionnaire. If any risks or disadvantages become known during the research, you will be informed straight away.
- What are the possible advantages of taking part?
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Your school will receive an anonymised report of the survey findings to help them review and support staff wellbeing.
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It may help us to understand more about how schools can support staff and help them to support young people
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- What happens if something goes wrong?
If you wish to complain or have any concerns about any aspect of the way that you have been approached or treated by members of staff, please contact Nick Tait at nick.tait@annafreud.org. If you then feel that your complaint has not been handled to your satisfaction, you can also contact the Chair of the UCL Research Ethics Committee at ethics@ucl.ac.uk.
- Will information about me be kept private?
Yes, all data collected in the survey are stored in secure systems that are only accessible to authorised members of the project team.
The survey will not ask for your name, date of birth or contact details. To help us analyse the data, you will be asked to optionally provide your place of work, broad role within the school, gender, ethnicity and age group.
We take great care to report the survey results only in an anonymised form.
- What will happen to the results of the research project?
We will share what we find out with the school and other partners involved in the project. We may also share it at conferences, in academic publications, reports, and through websites, social media channels, and newsletters. All data used will be completely anonymised and you will not be identified in any publication.