 Good afternoon everyone, thank you for joining us today for this webinar that is organized by the European Toolkit for Schools which is part of the European Commission's platform School Education Gateway and it's also organized in collaboration with the NESET network. My name is Cosmi Nada and I'm going to be your host today. I'm a research fellow at the Center for Research and Intervention in Education at the University of Porto and I'm also an editorial board member of the European Toolkit for Schools and administrative coordinator of the NESET network which is the network of experts working on the social dimension of education and training. You will hear more about the NESET network because the webinar is also based in an analytical report that the NESET network has recently produced. About the European Toolkit for Schools you might know that it compiles promising practices in the field of inclusive education into the same platform that you can consult online and my colleagues are going to share with you the link. Recently a good practice video from a school in Portugal that is doing very interesting work and is also connected with the topic of our webinar on well-being today has been launched and I encourage you to watch this video after our webinar. You will also have the link to the video in the chat. This webinar connects as well with the Commission's latest initiative entitled Pathways to School Success which seeks to tackle early school living, basic skills under achievement and mental health and well-being. Some of you may know this initiative since it was in the process of public consultation a few months ago. Pathways to School Success is in my opinion a change in the way we see education so rather than focusing on specific problems often in a rather disconnected manner we look at the elements that enhance school success and also broaden our understanding of what success is. So we have gathered here today to discuss a particularly relevant topic mental health and well-being and we all know that these are particularly challenging times for children and young people in Europe and across the world. In fact a recent consultation conducted by the EU and the UNICEF involving more than 10,000 children revealed that one in five children was showing signs of depression or were growing up unhappy and anxious about their futures. Similarly the World Health Organization conducted a study according to which 40% of 15-year-olds in Europe often feel low, nervous or anxious. Of course the COVID pandemic had a significant impact here since it brought numerous challenges to us all and especially to young people. Recently it has become more and more common for me for instance to read headlines in the newspapers about the children's and young people's mental health. One of such headlines says one in seven young people has a mental disorder or another headline reads a future of instability and insecurity and a pandemic. 23% of young people already attempted or considered suicide. In this context we have been hearing a lot about this mental health emergency or what is called the silent pandemic that seems to be spreading across the EU and beyond. And in this context what we can expect from educational institutions? Is there anything that they can do? We know that already in the 70s Basil Bernstein told us that education cannot compensate for society but of course this doesn't mean that nothing can be done at the school level. So one of the questions that we can approach today with the help of our respected and knowledgeable guests is what can schools do to promote the mental health and well-being of young people and the entire school community? First we will listen to Carmel Cefay and Silesh Desimoyne which are the authors of a recent message report entitled exactly as the webinar today a systematic whole school approach to mental health and well-being in schools in the EU. Then we will hear from Nadine Toy who will bring us the perspective of young people on this issue. So proceeding with with our first guest Carmel Cefay is the founding director of the Center for Resilience and Social Emotional Health and professor at the University of Malta. He is a joint honorary chair of the European Network for Social and Emotional Competence and joint founding director of the International Journal of Emotional Education. He is also a member of the NESET Coordination Team. His research interests are focused on how to create healthy spaces that promote resilience well-being and mental health of children and young people. His colleague Silesh Desimoyne is an associate professor at the University of Lisbon and the member of the Environmental Health Institute Research Center at the Faculty of Medicine in Lisbon. She is also a researcher of the Social Adventure Project and her main areas of interest are social and emotional education, resilience, health promotion in schools and risk behaviors in adolescence. So now I would like to give the floor to our speakers to present us the findings of the most recent NESET analytical report on well-being and mental health. Thank you. Okay and hello everyone if we can have the power point please upload it. Yes can you please click take control do you see the button? Okay one second yes okay okay so good afternoon everyone and they would like to thank Cosmin who on behalf of NESET and the European Toolkit for Schools invited us me and Silesh my colleague who are co-authors of this report to present the main findings of the report. As Cosmin very well said there is an increasing movement in Europe and other parts of the globe for education to go beyond narrow sectoral goals such as academic achievement and contribute more actively to the realities young people and children are facing today and here more specifically and we are talking about the well-being of children and young people as their well-being and mental health needs are becoming more evident and demanding as Cosmin very well said with those percentages. And if we have a strategic focus on well-being in education this also helps us in the realization of the Sustainable Developmental Goal for Point A which is about inclusive and say schools and 3.4 which is about mental health and well-being as well as children's rights to health protection and participation. A focus on well-being in schools also helps to avoid inequity poverty discrimination marginalization and exclusion and as you know these are key targets in the EU policies. One of the reasons also that there is COVID sorry Cosmin mentioned the pandemic which has promoted mental health increased the interest in mental health in schools and as well the high incidence of mental health problems. There is also another reason for the interest in mental health promotion in schools is the evidence which is coming out about its effectiveness for example there is evidence increasing evidence of the impact of well-being interventions in schools or students sense of belonging to school and commitment to school enhanced motivation and higher academic achievement and this also leads therefore to the prevention of early school leaving. There is also consistent evidence that schools are in a unique position because they have a very particular time in children's lives and they also have a broad reach they have basically capture all children and young people to effectively promote mental health and well-being of children and adolescents and very important to prevent the emergence and development of mental health issues at critical periods and during children's development. Okay so basically the report which we developed for NESET earlier this year is in response to the recognized need for schools across Europe to prioritize and actively promote well-being of all school children within safe and inclusive contexts. How did we go about this on the basis of a review of the international literature and especially recent literature last like last 10 years and in view of also the EU policies communications and actions in this area we developed a theoretical framework which will help to guide schools in collaboration with the community to organize themselves as a whole school system to promote mental health and well being and in fact my colleague Celest will be telling us a little bit more about this framework and then we also made in the report a number of recommendations for the effective implementation of a systemic whole school approach to the promotion of mental health and well-being and the prevention of bullying in schools and later on I will come back and talk to a little bit more about these recommendations but now I leave it to my colleague Celest to tell us a little bit about the theoretical framework which was developed in this report. So good afternoon to you all I would like as Carmel mentioned thank you Cosmin and NESET the opportunity to be here today and to collaborate in this project that was this report that we prepared along with another colleague together in this journey of reviewing the literature and present these results. So as Carmel said we developed this framework for a whole school approach to mental health and well-being based on the recent studies and current European European Union policies the communications and the reports and that was the basis for the development of this framework. This framework focuses on universal mental health and well-being interventions at curricular and contextual levels for all school children as a major goal of school complemented by targeted interventions for students at risk or students that are experiencing mental health difficulties. In addition the framework also focus on education mental health and well-being of adults who work with school children namely teachers and parents sorry that I took control but I didn't change the slide let me do this so now we are in the right slide. So as I said besides the universal and the target interventions the framework also focus on education mental health and well-being of adults who work with the with school children namely teachers and parents involving this way the whole school community. So this whole school approach to mental health and well-being framework encompasses a series of components namely a set of principles that inform the framework I am experiencing some problems in moving on the presentation I don't okay now okay the principles so they come all together so a set of principles that informs the framework a set of three concentric layers more proximal or distant to the students representing the critical components at different levels and these layers influence and contribute to another and the sustainability process is supporting the whole school approach so these are the three main components of the framework. If we look more in-depth to at these three components and starting with the principles a set of 11 principles inform the framework namely children and young people rights to health care quality education protection and participation among others holistic education that addresses the challenges of the 21st century the principle that refers that intervention should be health and strengths based to support children and young people to remain healthy and thrive academically socially and emotionally it should be organized within a systemic all school approach inclusive and equity driven so that all by equal opportunities to address their needs culturally relevant adapted to the diverse needs of the school population that is becoming more socially and culturally diverse bottom-up participative based on the principles of empowerment democracy and ownership relational focusing more on social and relational processes such as interpersonal relationships connectedness and the sense of belonging and less on policies and structures multi and transdisciplinary since schools needs to collaborate closely with various professionals and mental health services to address the intricate needs of vulnerable and marginalized students addressing the well-being of adults like was previously referred and provide them opportunities for personal and professional development and parenting education among others and finally listen to students voice supporting them to become more autonomous in their learning express their opinions and suggestions and be more actively involved in school processes so now moving to the key components and starting with the most proximal layer the classroom layer it includes three elements the universal curriculum with an explicit focus on educating children to make healthy choices and promote their health and well-being the curriculum includes social and emotional education resilience building and mental health literacy from early years to high school classroom climate another key component where foundational processes like supportive peer relationships inclusive practices caring teaches students the relationships and active engagement in meaningful activities and collaborative learning just to mention some of them are essential for mental health and well-being and the last one in this layer teacher education and mentoring essential to a quality curriculum implementation and positive student outcomes and in the scope when we look at the contents for this this this training we can highlight contents like understanding children and young people social and emotional development the implementation of mental health programs in the classroom addressing bullying working collaboratively with colleagues parents and professionals identifying symptoms of mental health difficulties in students just to mention some of the crucial elements that this this education can or should and compass so moving to the second layer the school layer includes four elements school climate that operates at as a health promoting context in which school members should feel free respected recognize it supported connected included and safe key aspects of school climate are for instance a sense of physical and psychological safety at school mutual respect inclusion equality kindness and solidarity which need to be embedded these key aspects across the whole school all school members needs to feel protected from prejudice discrimination violence or harassment and bullying the second element a student engagement since students needs to be active partners in the mental health and well-being school project and as such to student engagement is a fundamental component their participation can go from planning implementing and evaluating initiatives like policies practices and programs to delivering interventions such as peer mediated support for mental health the third element in this school layer is close collaboration with parents and community and their active engagement and that is one of the three pillars of the who health promotion framework in schools indiscope schools needs to take a more empowering and culturally responsive approach when collaborating with parents and be more responsive to their needs views including those from marginalized backgrounds that many times are left out and finally the fourth component of the school layer teachers and other staff well-being that needs also to be considered since it influenced the school community relationships and the classroom and school climate a whole school approach consequently considers the well-being of the staff as a paramount to their effectiveness of this approach the last layer the intersectoral layer encompasses three elements the first the targeted interventions for students at risk or experiencing mental health difficulties as part of an integrated approach to school mental health and well-being and these interventions should begin as early as possible and involve the contribution and support of professional and agencies sometimes these these target interventions and may lead teachers to feel that their role is not so important but effectively the role of the support staff and professionals outside school is quite central but teachers still have an active role in supporting the needs of these these students as well as their parents to lead this project to a good term. Partnerships with professionals and agencies are also a vital element of these layers since schools need to work in close collaboration with the various professionals and mental health services to address the complex needs of more the the more vulnerable and marginalized students as it was mentioned previously an intersectoral approach in which professionals school staff parents and students who are collaboratively as a team seems to ensure that the interventions are child-centered rather than service or professional centered and that they remain school-based rather than clinical based and finally in this layer partnerships with the local community that act as mental health services providers disseminate information organize or co-organize complementary health promotion activities for family children's and young people and so they have a key role in mental health promotion but the community involvement is also crucial in other domains like in helping to reduce prejudice and stigmatization towards mental health issues and changing social norms that may put children and families at risk of mental health problems. Finally we have the sustainability that is composed by three main processes the first one the quality of implementation that is considered one of the challenge for the success of the old school approach it includes planning implementation monitoring and support. In this in this process supportive policies structures and practices are key elements to sustain the quality of implementation and the project in the long run. This generally requires leadership and organizational support to drive the change and embed interventions into the structure and life of the schools to continue at the long run. The second process a participatory and flexible approach rooted in the school context requires an active involvement of the old school community. Some authors argue that a participatory flexible bottom-up approach is more likely to be successful and sustainable in European schools. However a bottom-up approach is often challenging to implement and subject to staff resistance and again an adequate teacher education and support is also crucial to the success of this old school approach and to end with this the presentation of the framework and this sustainability process supports from local regional and national authorities since the old school approach demands significant resources and cultural change. Place high pressure on school over an extended period of time this support is fundamental. Old school interventions as mentioned by and referred by the literature are more likely to be successful when supported by these authorities both in terms of advocacy for policies that recommend old school approach to mental health and through resourcing and so this is our framework the framework that is presented in the report and now I give the words to Carmel to move on with the recommendations. Thank you for your attention. Something happened with the presentation. Just a minute. I might have to. I will re-upload the file. Okay so thank you Celeste for that and now in the last part we'll have a look at some of the recommendations on how I take control of how this framework can be put into practice in schools. So these are recommendations for educational authorities, for schools, for teachers. We have limited time so I will go very briefly on these 10 recommendations. If you would like to know more about them they are presented in more detail in our report. Okay so okay so the first recommendation is the obvious one that well-being and mental health promotion needs to be established as a mandatory key learning goal in 21st century education in Europe integrated into the curriculum and supported by a systemic whole school approach. Research shows in order to be effective this approach needs to be implemented well with training, support and so on is integrated into the fabric of the school context embedded and sustained overtime. Second recommendation is to increase the importance and value of mental health and well-being and one way of doing that is to include it in the evaluation of what makes an effective and successful schools besides successful academic achievement. However we have to be careful here that the way we organize the assessment evaluation we do not repeat the mistakes of the past where we will start to label and children and schools and teachers as failures or have problems with mental health well-being assessment on the other hand so we have to be careful about high risk assessment high stakes assessment sorry so it has to be formative inclusive and systemic. The third recommendation is to do to make sure what we are already doing in mainstream education we are doing it well because mainstream educational practices these also promote or should promote mental health and well-being so teaching practices that foster connectedness relationships and so on, collaboration, active student participation, culturally responsive and inclusive practices these are these practices are the building blocks for both academic learning and social emotional competence and well-being and such practices fall within the remit of all school teachers. Okay as Celeste well mentioned in the framework we found also in the base of the literature that relatedness and connectedness are at the heart of well-being and mental health promotion an ethic of relatedness and care fostered by respectful caring and supportive relationships among and between various school members so we are here talking about students and teachers but also amongst students themselves among teachers staff themselves among between administration and and school staff between school and parents okay these kinds of relationships create help to create healthy spaces in which individuals can grow and thrive. Five as Celeste mentioned in the framework we strongly recommend in this report a bottom-up participatory approach which fits tailor to the ecology of the school and the local community okay in this respect this is far more likely to be meaningful to be owned and therefore to be effective teachers students parents in the local community need to be actively involved in the planning and implementation of programs of initiatives related to mental health and we would like to emphasize within this framework the student voice in particular because most of the time these are the most disempowered disenfranchised stakeholders so a strong and representative including students who are marginalized student voice will include co-designing of materials participation in the implementation of interventions participation in decision-making and also supporting their peers their mental health and well-being. Six and we talked about safe environments so involving the whole school community in tailoring interventions to prevent bullying okay within a whole school approach to bullying with priority actions at both universal prevention so this is very effective to create a culture where bullying and does not take place okay perpetrators are discouraged from engaging in bullying and also focus especially on bystanders that of research now is focusing on the road and also complemented with targeted interventions because victims of bullying many times they need support. Seven there is a need for a strategic focus on the mental health needs of vulnerable and marginalized students okay and schools are in a unique position to prevent the onset of mental health problems and address the mental health needs of vulnerable students to preventive and resilience building interventions at a critical time before these problems become more complex and chronic and researchers showing us that early adolescence there is a window of opportunity for schools to make a difference in children's life to prevent the development of mental health and problems in young people such interventions however needs to be implemented within an inclusive setting avoiding labeling and stigmatization related to this the eight recommendation is school-based intersectional support for students with mental health needs Celeste made explained this very well in the framework and here we are talking about close collaboration with mental health and other related services to ensure that the mental health needs of students are addressed within a transdisciplinary intersectional but school-based approach okay it is essential however that such interventions are accessible to all students responsive to the needs of the particular students and school community that are appropriate and also equitable okay for all students coming from different backgrounds nine Celeste well mentioned as well we need a very clear message from the evidence to prioritize teacher education in mental health and well-being if we want teachers to support the mental health and well-being of their students schools administration local needs to support the mental health and training and well-being of teachers and teacher education in particular needs to be a transformative personal and social developmental process you think this is very important that teachers will have the opportunity during their training both in early in initial teacher education at university or college but also their place of work to work on their own biases issues they might have okay to how to develop healthy relationships how to be effective communicators how to resolve conflict management these are very important skills so that they can then help to promote a classroom climate which promotes mental health and well-being and we also recommend that there will be national frameworks and both at initial teacher education university and college but also local educational authorities on the key educator competencies which every teacher will need to have in order for the effective delivery of mental health and well-being in schools and finally of course teachers need to be supported to do this so there needs to be mentoring programs professional networks learning communities to provide a collaborative learning platform environment well children teachers share and support each other the final conclusion is related to this to address the mental health and well-being of adults as well so besides education teacher education teachers also need the active support from authorities this administration and colleagues to deal effectively with the challenges and and stresses of the profession and to take care of their health and well-being and there is a lot of research for example on mindfulness mentoring okay collegiality and similarly parents schools need to encourage and empower parents in parental education okay and in taking care of their own health and well-being so thank you very much for that thank you carmel thank you slash two for the for this very very insightful presentation we are a little bit behind the clock but i think it was worthy because it was clearly visible how complex the report that you have produced and this this framework is and all these recommendations that that you just presented required sometime to be explained so i think it's we used the time wisely before i hand over to to nadine i would like also to to consult the audience also on this on this issue because it seems to me that from what we have seen in your report carmel and slash is that we know to some extent what needs to be done but at the same time we are suffering this silent pandemic that i was mentioning at the beginning and we keep hearing about all these mental health concerns regarding children and young people so it would be interesting to know to which extent our mental health and well-being considered in your school in your institution if the people in the audience do not belong to school they can refer to the institution in which they work at the moment so now i'm going to launch this this maintain it or that you can access by going to menti.com and inserting the code that is written on the screen and i'm going to share my screen now and i hope that you are able to to see that the answers are are already coming so the answer options are mental health and well-being are part of my schools or institutions core strategy mental health and well-being are addressed but in a rather sparse and isolated way or mental health and well-being are not addressed in my school institution at all so far i see four for answers and i know that we are around 50 people so i'm going to to leave the maintain it open for you to vote for a few more seconds to see if we managed to get at least the half of of the participants today to reply to this to this question if there are any troubles in in finding the instructions as i mentioned they are on the top part of the screen so access menti.com and use the code that is written on the screen i see that for now the the balance is more inclined towards mental health and well-being being addressed but rather sparsely and in an in an isolated way one participant just just replied that well-being and mental health are part of of their institution's core strategy which is encouraging but still it's the only only answer in in that direction so and we also have a few a few answers indicating that mental health and well-being are not addressed at all in their in their school and and institutions so i think this is it's it's interesting considering the knowledge that that was shared by by carmel and celeste on what needs to be done that now it seems that that we are somehow stuck at the implementation stage but it's also encouraging to see that even if addressed rather in an isolated way that mental health and well-being are becoming a concern in in most schools and and educational institutions now i will then present nadine who is a very very engaged young person who has been working on on these topics nadine is a board member of the organizing bureau of european school student unions which represents school students rights in europe and advocates tower to european institutions and other relevant stakeholders in the field of education nadine's work links to areas such as mental health school students experiences during the covid pandemic and many other topics which relate to representing the school students of europe recently nadine has led a task force of school students to research the effects of covid 19 on education and student well-being so nadine i will hand over for your presentation and i would also like you to react if possible together with the content that you prepared for us today also from the perspective of a young person that was quite recently in school and how you experienced these mental health and well being issues they were addressed in your own institution by other institutions that you are aware of so a little bit bringing the the perspective of young people to the table since the first part of the webinar we heard more the academic and uh data uh solid data perspectives it would be interesting to have also your contribution in that sense thank you and thank you cousin um so my name is nadine toy and i am a member of the organizing bureau of european school student union and board and i'm from ireland and i'm 21 years old so basically what i'd be presented today is that last year we worked on this research document alongside our secretary and and the research document is made to ensure that we listen to the school students perspective when evaluating the covid 19 pandemic and education of course as well during the pandemic and so in the report that we have created there's a lot of new stuff that hasn't been seen before as well as confirming some other things that's been found along the way and so we used a different a range of different methodology and research methodology whenever we were compiling the research and compiling the database for the document and i'll go through all that now in a minute and there'll be a space as well for questions for myself and for the other presenters as well at the end of the presentation and so first just to give a little bit of an insight into obesu and what it is so um obesu is the organizing bureau of european school student unions and we work with students from all over europe and in different kinds of secondary education and we are the umbrella body for national student unions and together they collaborate and they can work together and through our platform to achieve their goals and we have at the minute 34 members um from from austria and from belgium from basnia herds of agonia from check republic and denmark estonia finland france germany lithuania luxembourg moldova and italy kosovo and lithuania uh serbia romania slovakia slovenia spain switzerland turkey and the uk and we were founded in dublin in 1995 and we've been working to represent school student rights ever since then and we advocate as well for high quality education for everyone despite their background or other challenges that they might face in lying with education and this research that i'll be presenting today was mainly compiled by the obesu board um the obesu secretariat for our staff and we had a task force also on uh cova 19 research which were made up of members of our member organizations um so just on the document itself so the document is titled three school student eyes eyes impacts and challenges of cova 19 on education systems in europe and so in this document we delve into the school students experience of education during the pandemic um with the focus of course on online education and for us it was really really important to investigate this um side of things as we can see so often time and again how school students are overlooked and kind of completely forgotten about by the national governments and education systems and we saw that there was a space um to ensure that school student rights were hired and the school students perspective was hired as well in the pandemic and the pandemic itself saw one of the biggest disruptions to education since the second world war so that's huge that over 17 million students were affected by the school closures and during the pandemic so that's like 17 million students who missed out on not just their education but also meeting with friends leaving their home having the chance to engage with normality um and this report looks into this and through involving a six month inquiry and using different methods and involving over 1000 students and teachers from many different european countries and so just to go a wee bit into our methodology so our research methodology could be split into three different main categories and so our first categories would be our focus groups and interviews so we had six focus groups and three interviews um involving students and teachers from 13 different countries in europe and we had a fairly relative um balance of gender and urban and rural and age group as well and where possible in the interviews and in the focus groups we conducted the um the focus group and the interviews in the mother tongue of the participants and so that they feel more comfortable answering and so that they'd be able to express their opinions and express their experiences fully and to their best capability and then our second category would be uh consultations of our member organizations and so we have two statutory events a year and this is a general assembly at our council of members and we consulted all of our member organizations and two general assemblies and one council of members um over the past two years and got them to say what was going on on the national level in their countries and with theirs specific type of education and then lastly we had our survey which reached over 1000 students and the survey itself was translated into four different languages it was translated into english, anglish, french and italian and it contained many different kinds of questions that are closed closed questions that are open-ended questions and multiple choice and it kind of gave it that opportunity as well to empower everyone to answer in a way that was most comfortable for them because it was translated into so many different languages as well um so these research methodologies allowed us to look at both the individual student itself as well as three-member organizations look at how things are going on a complete national level um so i'll just go through some of the data from our surveys um of our respondents so you can see here the age group of our respondents here we go as young as 12 and up to 21 and so and then three quarters of that is in between 30 or between 15 and 18 sorry so you can kind of see it's a it's a little bit dispersed and you have the older students there kind of representing the vocational educational training and then the younger school students as well which is nice to see too and moving forward we can see that there is a massive majority of female students so there's about 70 percent of the students that were actually surveyed was female it's just the way it ended up I suppose and then as well we have a rural urban distribution in the survey results as well so I'd say about 60 percent of the respondents were rural and 40 percent of them were from an urban background um so the first thing that we did whenever we were looking at our focus groups we wanted to draw from our member organizations to create our focus groups so our focus groups lasted about one hour or one hour and 15 30 minutes and so we had a school student activists as well as teachers from different European countries to participate in the working groups or in the focus groups sorry and we always began the focus group by kind of breaking the ice a little bit by talking about the positives of school and it was really nice to have them talk about this like pre-pandemic times and how they enjoyed school whenever they were at this pre-pandemic level and so it was really clear to us that the transition to online education really made students view in-person education in a really positive light and kind of reminisce about the things that would have happened whenever they were in school because this this these focus groups were done kind of in the height of the pandemic whenever most countries had school closures and a lot of our focus group and survey participants and saw schools community of teachers and students kind of entwined together and supporting each other and assisting each other and a lot of our participants mentioned this is something we really missed about in-person school and that comes back as well to the next set report of the whole school approach kind of this community of teachers and students working together in all aspects and I suppose especially in mental health to support each other as well so then they had the informal education so we were talking a lot about the extracurricular activities the school trips and the extra stuff that happens in school the informal education that happens just naturally as a result of being in that environment with other students and being in an environment with just talking to teachers talking to other students older students younger students and how that this is a really positive thing that students really enjoyed about school and taking part in all these different kind of extracurricular activities and student activism and this is something that they really thought was a huge positive about school and they're really they were really missing it during the online education and so even things like creating a school newspaper and everyone kind of getting together and buzzing about the school newspaper and so they pointed out that these are the kind of things that they really missed with education being online and of course as well the socializing aspect of school so a lot of students go to school to make friends and to meet their friends and to have that social development and peer interaction so these are a lot of positives about school that kind of gone missing during the pandemic and so moving online to the digital transition so we know that a lot of the students were left behind during the digital transition and but it was interesting to lay off whenever we were talking to Estonian students they felt that they were kind of at an advantage over other countries in Europe because they had this great kind of technology already in place in Estonia and it's a technological leader that they felt that they transitioned quite smoothly into online education so that kind of seems to be the exception though because as if you look at these sort of responses as well it seems that the most of the other countries explain how the internet connection was very bad and how it was difficult to join classes or upload work or anything like anything to do with online education whenever their broadband wasn't working or they didn't have access to a computer or other different kind of technology and we also looked at students access to education by considering three main factors and so the three main factors that we considered was their own personal space to have somewhere to to study and to do their schoolwork in a quiet environment and another one thing was internet connections so they have internet connection at home and a personal device as well that they have access to a laptop or a tablet or computer or somewhere that they could do their homework and do their schoolwork and what we found was that a third of respondents don't have access to the three basic needs I suppose for online education and so that was something that was really shocking for us and another thing for us students with special educational needs so we see that a lot of the time students with special educational needs have been completely forgotten about in terms of online education so platforms are often not accessible to the students who have special educational needs and the barriers that these students face prior to online education and has been completely exaggerated exaggerated during the pandemic and online education and another thing that came up time and time again during our research was standard opening and so this is something where different students would come in at different times during the day and it was something that completely students would say that was really inaccessible for them especially for rural students who were trying to get transport in and out from school and at all times of the day it was just really they were messing up then on their online education and couldn't access that and digital education has impacted the education of non-native language speakers as well and so more like immigrant students and people who don't speak the first language of the country in which they're being educated and so particularly those as well whose parents don't also speak the national language and it leaves them in a position of not really having the support at home and to deal with their education and to help them with their schoolwork or whatever the case may be and this paired alongside lack of access to technology has been extremely detrimental to the education of these students and so just moving forward here now we just have our tools that were used for as you can see like there's not much I mean out of a thousand students these are the responses for what they have access to on a daily basis so you can see like only nine students have access to their to their own room and it's just the fact that a third of them don't have access to the three basic requirements is completely shocking for us and so moving forward with our recommendations I just want to say first of all that our recommendations are not and these are not all of them there's so much more in our in our report as well and it's up on our best our website obesa.org if you would like to read it um in fully um but basically the first thing to mention is that school closures are a last resort and so like removing the safe space for students that is school is absolutely should be the last resort and not ever the first response to the pandemic um that to put an end to this informal learning and the social growth is just not what it should be considered first when we look at the pandemic and we should allow students to feel safe and students shouldn't be worried about their safety when they're in school so schools should be um have better infrastructure for the safe for safer schools so more ventilation and bigger classrooms and filtering systems so that students can be um can't be safe in the school without the fear of catching an infection and as well equal distribution of resources so rural or a migrant or especially educational needs students should never be facing barriers to education um due to funding and resources being allocated and distributed unevenly and so that's just some of our recommendations in digital transition but to move on quickly to student well-being sorry to interrupt just can can you wrap up please in around five minutes yeah perfect thank you um so just i'll just go for quickly here now so the student well-being is what we've seen is that there has been extreme stress but on student well-being over the the course of the pandemic students responding to our survey which has been so shocking for us is the only a tenth of the sample of the survey responses said that they felt positive and optimistic about the future so that's only one out of ten said that they feel positive and optimistic about their future and themselves as well and and there's so many causes of stress for students at the minute which is something that we think is completely acceptable and so one of the huge one of the biggest stresses and we can see it also here in our um uh in our survey responses is stress at home or at school and so we don't see that school should be something that students should have to stress about and school and school stress should never be normalized either um moving on uh we can go forward to students responses to their stress and so we can see here that this is again our survey responses of how students are coping with their stress and the main one at the top is to pursue hobbies and passions and of course with the pandemic a lot of access to hobbies and passions and if it's something like sports a lot of sports clubs has been closed during the pandemic and this kind of thing and so again this kind of removes that ability to um relieve your stress and to to meet with friends and stuff to even talk about this stress is can be really difficult and so our recommendations on the mental health side of things actually much like the next step report and so it's kind of like this community approach to mental health so like a whole school approach again where you have um students and the teachers coming together and there it should be normalized um that this mental health is mainstreamed within schools and um included in this like student participation should be included within the mental health um the the removing of the mental health barriers and the second one is for just stresses so that the school stress again should never be normalized and we should make the effort to reduce the amount of school stress and it should be done as well again with the whole school approach and the one thing that we saw as a huge one was the free mental health counseling and so 20 percent of students said that they were facing financial stress as well as other kinds of stress and that they didn't have access to free mental health or any kind of mental health counseling and due to the financial barriers so we think it's really important that this is involved within schools as well and so just to conclude quickly is that I would really recommend reading the report if you have a chance it's kind of long but it is definitely worth it and just to say as well that even though the things are going back to normal we can see that so much remains uncertain for students and what they'll be facing and what their future and their education is going to look like over the coming years and in this year's commem in commem 2021 we had a debrief of the research with our member organizations and the it's astounding the level of fear and the fact that there's still so much uncertainty how much fear that's causing within our member organizations and students across Europe so yeah this was made I suppose to kind of highlight the school student perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic, education during the pandemic and also mental health especially during the pandemic as well and so I hope that I've done it justice today and if you have any questions please feel free to email me at any time my emails there as well and I think there is going to be time for questions now and thank you thank you Nadine for this also very well managed time and the quantity of information that you presented in such a short time was impressive there are a few comments in the chat mentioning that these findings are very interesting and some participants are very much looking forward into reading the full report there is also a question if all the new governments have been informed about these results and here perhaps you want to explain very briefly how do you disseminate the results of your findings yeah so we present the this report to all European and so European bodies like the European Commission the European Union etc and then this is also shared with our member organizations who then share with the national governments so we have member organizations across Europe and they would use this report to advocate with their national governments as well thank you for for that clarification I believe that there are not many other questions in in the chat so we can still have a few more minutes before we finish because I think we we are in front of very interesting and insightful presentations and it would be a pity not to discuss them a little bit further I would like also to make a comment while we we receive more more questions about both reports in fact but particularly regarding the necessary report because I had this impression as I as I said a while ago that this report is very comprehensive and it clearly shows us what needs to be done but when we look at these recommendations and especially the 10 recommendations that that were presented sometimes perhaps it's difficult for for us or for teachers for the school principals to imagine how they could implement those recommendations and I have the impression that Carmel and and slash you have included in your report also references to to promising practices how can can participants learn more about this like get inspired by what what other educational institutions are doing regarding mental health and well-being and of course one of the ways of of doing that is looking at the european toolkit for schools and the amazing resources that that are available there but I would like to hear you more on this topic especially as experts on this topic of mental health and well-being yeah um I can say something very briefly but Celeste can also join me so in the reports we gave various examples and boxes and references to european projects like erasmus plus projects which are working on on promoting mental health in schools like for example the project promise which is developing a whole school curriculum in mental health promotion from early years to to high school and we also refer to other initiatives which are going on in various countries and in the recommendations they were quite brief we also and refer to what can be done in practical terms and one way we recommend is that schools join and teachers they join forces through collaborative platforms to share and learn from each other a very very important part I think is that the report provides a roadmap of how schools can organize themselves and mobilize their resources to create a whole school approach to mental health and well-being however it's very important we underline that this process come from a bottom up approach where all the stakeholders including the students at the very center they discuss together they do a needs analysis what needs to be done for the school in terms of this framework which we proposed how can we adapt that framework to our own needs and how we can then implement it what resources do we need to have so a sort of needs analysis if we if this process goes through this bottom up approach through the involvement of the whole school community and in line with the ecology of the school we think that it is more likely to be successful feasible but and also sustainable of course it will need support by legislation advocacy supports from the local educational authorities so there needs also to be more awareness at higher level okay which underlines the importance the importance of well-being in schools and I think the initiative is being taken at the moment by the European Commission such as the pathways to school success and the development of a communication in the near future the school and the European toolkit for schools these are crucial resources which can be very helpful for schools in Europe thank you Carmel for your clarification perhaps Celeste has anything to add well I was just thinking about the the the good practices that we have already some of them are highlighted in the in the report for instance this project that we highlight also in the report the promise project that is approach a project focus especially on promoting mental health in school and this project is about to end in the next month and it will hand with evidence on the its impact on students on teachers and on their gain of social and emotional competencies on resilience on mental health problems so there are several good projects several practices and best practices evaluated with a proper in a proper way in several European countries so that is also a good base for schools and school communities to to get support and to move on to the implementation of these initiatives and in order them to be sustainable and promote positive outcomes for the all school community thank you Celeste and also now I will hand over to Nadine with with the same question I'm not sure if in your report you had this objective of understanding or collecting also promising practices that the schools are doing but even if you didn't I'm sure that in your work at at Obesu you you also map map these kind of practices and how they could become you know more effective more known to to sustain this implementation of of mental health and well-being because as we saw with with the question that we asked to to our participants it seems that mental health and well-being might be more present in in the lives of educational institutions but they are still not tackled in in a very consistent way thank you definitely I agree completely with Carmen it's last there and that this sharing of best practices is 100% the best way to go about it and we do this often as well with our own member organizations and topics like mental health and these kinds of things and the idea that not everybody does it right but everyone has a way of doing it that is kind of right and together it can create something that works really well and this taking different points of view into consideration and create one kind of way of going about things is very important and so that we can have that kind of again whole-school approach and everyone is on the same page about how to react to these kinds of things and how to mainstream mental health and good mental health into education and into schools and into different institutions thank you so much Nadine since we are already 10 minutes beyond our initial planned time and there are no questions on on the chat I think it's time for us to to close this this session I would like to thank again our participants carnal slash than Nadine for their very insightful presentations also to remind you that both reports on which the their presentations were based are available online the links were already shared with you if you you didn't take note of the links it's enough to to look online for neset network or obesu and you will very very quickly identify these these reports and you will be able to consult them in their entirety so the full versions of the reports are available also now after this hearing this very very interesting presentations and perhaps having this impression that we would like to know more on on how we can we can actually do it I would encourage you to consult some of the resources on the european toolkit for schools which are organized precisely according to this logic of the whole-school approach that carmel and slashed very very clearly explained to us so in the name of of the european toolkit for schools the school education gateway I would like to thank you all for for your participation and wish you a great weekend thank you