#BeeWell workshops: exploring this year’s data with young people and school staff

The #BeeWell survey provides schools with rich data to support their decision-making in how best to support pupil wellbeing. Over the past few weeks, the #BeeWell team in Greater Manchester have been delivering workshops in schools and with local authorities to help young people, school staff and councils decide how best to respond to this year’s data

Rachael Grant, Regional Improvement Officer at the Child Outcomes Research Consortium, provides her insight into the key themes and opportunities this has raised.

As a youth-centred programme, feeding back the data to pupils is an essential part of #BeeWell, putting young people at the heart of decision-making. In recent sessions with #BeeWell schools, we worked with pupils to explore their school data in the context of the Greater Manchester headline findings, and data specific to their local area. Some pupils were pleasantly surprised at the increase in young people feeling hope and optimism for the future. Key priorities the students highlighted for improvement, looking at the local area data, included inequalities, self-esteem and discrimination. Discussions about school support and community provision led to pupils shortlisting several suggestions to take back to senior staff, which included more access to gym facilities, sharing positive news in form time and improving the spaces available to young people in the community. With Senior Leaders present, it was a great opportunity for them to hear so many young people’s suggestions about how to improve mental health and wellbeing.

In our workshops for school staff, we explore and interpret their #BeeWell school data to give them an overview of how their students have responded to the survey and the potential outcomes of this. In Oldham, we recently delivered a workshop for Senior Mental Health Leads (SMHLs) from a number of schools, organised by Oldham Council’s Mental Health in Education Manager. Key partners working in mental health attended the day, including colleagues from the Mental Health Support Team and Emotional Wellbeing Specialist Nurse. We identified changes over time across Oldham using the #BeeWell data, and noted priority areas for support. Bringing together staff from different sectors to collaborate is a key part of the #BeeWell programme in ensuring that young people’s wellbeing is everybody’s business and we look forward to collaborating further with them going forward

Information about our workshops available to Greater Manchester schools is available here. To find out more, please email the #BeeWell Greater Manchester team: beewell@manchester.ac.uk.