Elected education at home

#BeeWell is a survey that thousands of young people take part in. It has been co-designed by young people working with education and mental health experts, and reflects what is most important in their lives.

The answers help us to understand what affects young people’s wellbeing and what makes them thrive. Local organisations act on this information to help improve the lives of young people.

We asked young people what wellbeing meant to them, and these are some of their ideas:

If you are educated at home and of secondary school age (between 11 and 16 years old) you can complete the survey.

It is important that we hear from lots of different groups of young people, and we have designed different versions of the survey to make it easier for various young people to take part, and to make sure the questions are relevant to their lives. For example, there is a symbol version for young people who would find this easier to understand.

In the version of the survey for electively home educated young people, we have removed all questions about school life that are not relevant to young people who are educated at home.

If you and your parent/carer decide that you would like to take part, your parent/carer will need to contact lawrence.wo@manchester.ac.uk to register your information to opt you into the survey.

Your parent/carer will then be sent a link to an online survey to provide background information, such as your name, age and date of birth. A full list of the information we collect and why we collect it can be found here.

Once your parent/carer has provided this information, they will be emailed a link to the survey and a study ID for you. Parents/carers will also receive guidance on how to best support you to complete the survey, for example giving you privacy to complete the survey.

All communications from the #BeeWell team will be sent to your parent/carer.

The survey will be completed online.

You can decide at any point before and during the survey that you do not want to take part even if your parent/carer has registered you to complete the survey. However, once you have completed the survey, we cannot remove your data.

No, if you don’t want to answer a question you can skip it and move onto the next one. Or you can stop completing the survey at any point.

The survey gathers the thoughts and feelings of young people each year, to understand their wellbeing and the things that influence wellbeing.

There are questions about how you think and feel about yourself. This includes questions about your wellbeing, self-esteem, and how well you cope with stress.

It includes questions about your physical health, your sleep, and your physical activity, and about how you like to spend your free time, including your use of social media.

It also asks questions about your home environment and the area that you live in, and about your relationships with other people.

These are all things that can affect people’s wellbeing.

You do not have to answer any question that you don’t want to, just skip it and move onto the next.

These questions are asked because we want to better understand if young people’s gender and sexuality makes a difference to their wellbeing.

You can complete the survey anytime between the 1st October and 29th November 2024.

There will be “hover over” boxes explaining what some of the words mean.

You can also ask for help, for example, for someone to read and explain the questions to you, but the person helping you should give you privacy to answer the question on your own, without looking at your answer.

The survey itself will only be available in English.

The consent forms that your parents or carers will receive have been translated into Bengali; Malayalam; Nepali; Panjabi; Polish; Romanian.

Before you start the survey, your parent/carer will complete a short questionnaire asking for some basic background information such as your postcode, age and sex.

We gather this information for several reasons:

So that we can see the differences in wellbeing across different groups of young people, for example, by age, sex or if young people have special educational needs.

To track young people’s survey answers over time.

To link to other information (e.g. NHS data, which can be useful for increasing our understanding about young people’s wellbeing).

A full list of the information and why we collect it can be found in this document.

Individuals completing the survey cannot be identified by any schools or Local Authorities. Only the data manager(s) at The University of Manchester will have access to identifiable data, such as your name, postcode and date of birth. Other members of the research team at The University of Manchester will have access to pseudonymised data. This means that we give your data a secret code that only the data manager knows, so the rest of the research team can’t access your personal, identifiable information.

All the data that we gather is stored securely in our encrypted research data storage facility at The University of Manchester, known as Isilon.

Anonymised data based on the average responses from all survey respondents in the geographical area is used to create the #BeeWell neighbourhood dashboard. This is an online feedback system which allows organisations to gain a better understanding of the wellbeing needs in a particular area and to target resources where they are most needed.

Your answers will be included in this neighbourhood dashboard. This is published on the #BeeWell website, but no individuals can be identified.

We will also produce a report summarising the anonymised findings from the #BeeWell EHE survey 2024.

Young people are involved with the work of #BeeWell every step of the way.

The #BeeWell team in Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton have lots of opportunities for young people to take part.

We have a dedicated group called Youth Matters that makes sure the views of young people stay central to all #BeeWell activities and steers our response to the #BeeWell data. The group is central to discussions and decision-making. And it has the power and funding to commission activities that address the survey findings most important to them. This group meets monthly.

If you don’t want to meet up every month, just come along when you can.  You can get involved in other ways, such as giving your views on information that we produce, voting on ideas for new activities etc.

There are also other opportunities to be involved in #BeeWell. For example, a young researchers programme with the University of Manchester (online) where young people are introduced to research and analysis.

Please email HIOW.BeeWell@hants.gov.uk if you’d like more information or would like to get involved.