 Hello everyone Ross here at Teacher Talker. I hope you're well today I'd like to talk to you about teacher workload and well-being All the goods the bads and the ugliest what can a school do to generally support teacher of mental health and workload and for people watching elsewhere outside of at least England I know got a lot of people watching in lots of different parts just to make sure you're all in the right place We're looking at teacher workload and well-being and I'm going to be joined by Mark Solomon shortly the founder of well-being and Last year the Department for Education recently published a well-being charter To improve the mental health and well-being of teachers and support staff in our schools and colleges Inside the charter there are 11 and I'm just going to remind you of what these are in terms of how a school and college can make some organizational commitments To help support the work for force teacher workload and teacher mental health's been a Passionate topic of mine for almost a decade now and we'll unpick some of the kind of nitty-gritty research details some of the good Information that's being shared in some of our schools and colleges as well as some of the not so good issues In some of the work that I've previously published under toxic schools But before we get started before I bring Mark in Let me just do some reminders and if you're watching on Twitter Facebook or YouTube if you're logged in then you can leave comments and I'll post those questions onto the screen so everyone else can see them and You can post some questions to myself or to mark and Obviously this record and all the slides will be shared later But before I bring Mark in let me just go through these 11 organizational commitments that the Department for Education published last year in their well-being charter So number one is to prioritize staff mental health and not all schools have a well-being policy sadly But hopefully yours does number two give staff the support they need to take responsibility for their own and For other people's well-being so you know in your professional development There should be many opportunities For managing mental health, you know things like pensions all those different things outside of the classroom Day-to-day teacher training that we receive Point number three give give your managers access to this tools and resources that they need to support the well-being of people They lie manage so really good effective lie manager and appraisal systems in place a clear Communications policy, you know, I mentioned that word email a burden for us all. How do we do this better? Point five give all staff a voice in decision-making at my research on collective teacher efficacy or at least Autonomous schools are when all staff feel that they are part of the key decisions Point number six drive down any unnecessary workload. How often does your school take something away? Rather than just always introduce something new point seven. Do you have a working and diverse? Flexible team but also a person that leads this a kind of champion of workload and well-being number eight Create the good behavior culture number nine support staff to progress in their careers number ten a Sub-strategy for protecting leader a well-being and mental health something. It's often not addressed I think and there's a good reason why we always seem to have headteacher vacancies And then the last one hold ourselves accountable Including by measuring staff well-being. So this is the particular topic. I'd like to discuss With mark who I'm going to bring in an introduce and before I do that mark if you bet give me one moment I'm just going to I'll do that in a minute. I'll bring in where we've got our audience from from around the world So we've got a lot of people watching in lots of places around the world I'm going to bring Mark in Mark. Can I welcome you and could you say hello to everybody watching? Yeah, welcome to everybody. Thanks so much for attending today really glad to be here and thanks Ross for inviting me and having me Mark, can I just get you to just give us a little background into your and your expertise and We'll come into well be shortly, but just give us a little synopsis of your your kind of work in history Yeah, well I spent the last 12 years and coaching and supporting school leaders Who've been wanting to develop their culture and leadership for the last five years around? Asking them to put staff first an interestingly Well-being which I've founded a couple of years ago Actually came out from working with 17 schools around Belfast in Northern Ireland and the survey We use that actually being used in ballet quite high school clearly a school ahead of them the time because since 2010 to 2016 they'd actually measured and trapped the well-being of their staff every year and It was the schools around them that asked me to get involved to help and in many ways that's how well be that was created I did grow up in a teaching house. So my mum was a teacher though I have to say that my senior leadership experience came from a completely different sector and up until 2008 I was in retail banking so you can all boo now and I was the retail director for Saint-Diery's Bank and kind of made this switch in 2008 to as part of the 2012 Olympics actually where I teamed up with David Henry the for many of you He might be a little bit a 1968 gold medalist And we brought Olympians into schools and created a program to help young people Effectively become an Olympian of their choice. So that's kind of how I'm in schools and then I was drawn so much by How the difference you can make there to really stay here and and support staff so So fascinating background and I guess your your exposure into schools from those kind of sources Started to increase your own interest or or at least your awareness of the pressures that are that teachers are under in particular Yes, I've been a governor as well I should have said for over 20 years and I in both the primary and the secondary sectors over in England and I chaired a 13 school Trust which is more a community a federated group of schools and before multi-academy trust came along and so I've always been really fascinated by the education and In fact, my journey has kind of gone the opposite way to most people because after the 2012 games I Developed a character education program 63 lesson plans that I wrote And I was very focused on helping young people be the best that they could be and then I read a lot of research That showed particularly for resilience and other skills that after six months or so after you'd help them with these skills If they didn't practice it They kind of lost and then I moved to whole school Development well-being saying no you've got to capture everybody together And then sort of in 2015 16 began to realize actually the only way to get this Right and deliver the best student outcomes was actually to put staff first And I although John Thompson wrote the book and claim the title I think I was going around with PowerPoints put staff first Before that and so well done to him on implementing it, but for me the fastest Way to get the best student attainment is by looking after staff you know and So that's kind of the message I go around trying to do We're here today Mark So we're gonna put some slides up shortly and go through some of the your research and Insights into you know teacher work and well-being and can we just begin by talking about the Department for Education's well-being charter Give it give us your opinion why school should sign up to that in particular Yes, so in terms of there it's a useful framework and I'll come on to a bit more of the detail when we get going because I've got some slides around just My suggesting which of those commitments you might want to look at first and why Obviously, it's a voluntary it's a voluntary charter Which you can look at as both an opportunity missed in terms of You know like safeguarding should we put in something statutory around this to get people to to really focus in on it I think genuinely most leaders Do want to do things about it, but many of them find it difficult to find the time To to resource but here we've got a useful framework and the key thing is to focus in on those things that are gonna make the biggest difference Because when you look at the hauling Levin commitments and go, you know, it feels quite overwhelming doesn't it that you know Hey, I'm gonna implement all these things and of course with no instructions No added resource or capacity implement it so In terms of helping people see clearly it's a statement of intent to staff that actually you mean business both Current and future staff. It's a way of supporting retention recruitment attraction all those things But actually can't be a tick box. You've got to mean it Because otherwise people still is see straight through it. Yeah, absolutely So people need the you know that it's more of the how rather than just the what and the why I'm gonna put on the screen mark and the actual image of the Education staff well-being chartless of just to remind people Or if you've not seen it before I'll just put a reminder here at the bottom of the screen There is the hyperlink And so if you're searching for it, you know shortcode DFE well-being charter I'm sure you'll find it and I'll also put a link and I'll circulate this my own blog and thoughts on the well-being but mark give us a little Overview of what what staff will find here what the 11 are that I went through at the start and then we'll start to unpick How we can bring this to life? Yeah, I'm just gonna start. I mean, obviously we know what we're gonna talk about today, and I'm not sure Where you're all in your staff well-being journey And so I just want to share information on the charter and a few of the things that I've learned working with hundreds of schools I'm sure there's gonna be things that I cover that you're gonna know well or you already be doing and I'm also sure there'll be practical steps for you to take away and before I just jump into the charter I just thought it'd be useful to share a few stats with you I'm sure many of us have felt like this I'm probably before we had even heard of COVID because we've often been in kind of managing in crisis for a number of years and The last two years of all we added significantly to this and it is hard to believe isn't it that it has been going on for so long So I just want to share these numbers with you, you know and some of them you have I've seen As well and I guess it I'm gonna be careful to because in the context of what we're seeing in places You know like Ukraine, you know It perhaps puts some kind of perspective around the things we're talking about But it doesn't change the fact that the challenges we've gotten the difficulties that many staff are facing and We're gonna be talking about different references. So whilst I might not Point to where the links are I'm happy to share any of the references and links that I use today So if we just start at the top, you know, 33 is a well-known number It's that percentage of new teachers leaving within the first five years You'll be familiar with that and we're also yet to see what the long-term impact of COVID might be And particularly as we keep seeing a number of reports talking about how half or more of staff are considering leaving Which is a figure that's largely remained unchanged from the last five years The we know that eight out of the nine last nine years in England recruitment tasks have been missed and therefore Recruitment retention a key challenge and certainly the school where I'm a governor, you know We're constantly finding it difficult to obtain not just key teachers now We're starting to find it difficult to recruit some support staff as well in key roles In the 2021 staff well-being index from education support We can see that 72% of staff describe themselves as being stressed and 44% of them citing symptoms of anxiety and 28% saying that Something from depression which are just enormous numbers And stress is the number one cause of long-term staff absence and only second to minor illnesses for sort short-term absences So I just want to look at what are some of the reasons behind that stress Because then when we get on to the charter we can be thinking about some of the how-to's what what we might do And it's often workload and working hours that's talked about most and of course we all know back in 2018 in England I know internationally having been at the guest conference There was a talk there and international schools often look at this the government introduced the workload reduction toolkit So workload reduction has been a key focus and I'm sure if you like most schools I work we've you've taken action whether that's reducing things like the number of data requests Planning marking or something else Yet even in our surveys and results in schools where staff feedback is more positive and well-being these reporters Comparatively strong workload remains high So we know we all work in a high workload environment So in many ways it isn't just about how we reduce it although as Ross said, you know, we sure we're not going to add new things Without taking something away, but it's also about how it's managed You know, so whether staff are trained in efficient working practices and how staff think about it because we can all work too much If we simply take our hours rather than choosing our hours of work and making our work fit to it Which is easier said than done, but we do need to help our staff adopt this approach the final number and something that Ross has been sharing is it comes from the Nuffield report which showed that 68% of teachers in England felt accountability related stress It's a third higher than across other countries, but even with the average being 45% We can see that it really is how people feel about workload That's key and sorry the consequences of the workload and not being able to deliver that accountability as well as things like inspections that make a difference and So building a psychologically safe place of work is so important, you know one way staff feel safe can experiment and learn and You know How to do that particular thing is for another day, but we will touch on it a little bit later And I just want to finish this particular area just by Launching and talking about one other study, which was a large study by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health And this is important for teaching because those in education particularly in schools and colleges and maths and Around the world in different schools have chosen to work in one of the three most stressful occupations that are out there And this large study by out in the US Showed that those working in a high-stress job have a 43% increased risk of early death So I'll just let you kind of reflect on that for a minute It is my intention to shock and there is better news in a minute That I'll come on to Statistic isn't it Mark? I guess I guess You know when I you know I qualified a long time ago, but I knew I was entering a challenging profession It doesn't mean that it's right or acceptable, but we know that the nature of the job is tough I think the important point that you made is it's knowing how to To manage those stresses as a school institution, you know school leaders buffering External accountability off-state Department for Education challenges away from the body of staff and only Giving them exposure to those things as and when they need to know Yeah, absolutely and the reason why it is so important if I put if I just turn to naught percent the good news is Actually, the best place to be is in a high-stress environment But understanding that stress is simply part of a job and knowing how to manage it because that actually makes you not only 0% increased risk it actually puts you into the best Category so if you're working a high-stress job Congratulation, and you know how to manage this you can expect to live the longest life of anybody So that's how important staff well-being is in many ways. It isn't just about today It's the impact it can have on people's health well-being and Obviously their teaching career and there are also other real positives that come out which are kind of you know Sit across from this in a way because we know from research as well that teachers have by a better overall life satisfaction than many of the graduate careers Yet we also know that despite this date they also talk about a face the greatest work related stress the final bit I'll say on this point is that The research also shows how experience of staff differs So one thing in the Nuffield report again shows that staff are twice as likely to feel stressed if their colleagues do So the establishment, so that's a school or an education whichever education Establishing you're in and the environment they work in really does matter That's why we see such different scores and feedback between schools and colleges that we work with So you can really make a difference locally and don't just assume and there's Helping that you can't do your bit. Yeah, and there's just one other thing from that Nuffield research mark that I Think we need more research a longitudinal study perhaps on how teachers evolve throughout their profession and how stress changes According to experience or when you take on a new role or increased responsibility It's just just a nice interest because one of the things we one of the filters we measure actually in terms of scores is time at school Again, I would say from our own You know, we're in 320 plus schools now only just launching before Covid But we don't see any clear patterns yet and it seems again to be quite local So we see schools where new starters give much higher scores and we also see schools where new starters are also give lower Scores or I see old timers Who've kind of been there again looking like they've had enough, but we also see great experience on people hanging there So I would argue I Think you know this. It's really about the leadership and culture On that note, Mark, you know, we know it's not just having a full pot of tea and coffee in the staff room and you know Those types things to tick the well-being box How does staff, you know meet the those 11 commitments, you know, not we've mentioned we can't do it all at once So where did they where would you recommend people start on? So It's a bit like I'll just cut with this one, but it is a bit like building a house really and The key thing first is to think about putting the foundations first So that's really that leadership behaviors and systems to support. It's about what happens every day And so when we come on to the chart a bit, it's really about the tools that managers have It is about those senior leader protections as well Because actually if you get those bit right and get these foundations right for the things can come flow These things become They almost you know part of the wall so to speak they become hidden over time and you don't appreciate them because when they work well You they you don't notice some of suppose. Yeah, well if you think about it that the better your well-being the better staff well-being measurement comes or The better your environment is which to work unless you have to talk about it because really it is about what happens every day You know when I walk into school that day. Am I agreed to dwell? When I go home at night and I've got a lot of work left. Am I feeling about? You know, am I okay to just leave it and I pick it up the next day Or do I worry about from an accountability point of view? Oh my god, I haven't done things Do I feel the pressure? It's all those pressure from the system the other thing from from working all the schools I know staff put a lot pressure on themselves to get things done. They're often perfectionists They really care about their pupils and students. They don't like leaving things not not not finished And so part of that is about how we help staff realize look look in the mirror. Have you done your best? Again, it's a conversation. I often have in our results review cause we This is about What happens typically the day you start going home thinking about what they didn't get done today And all the things they didn't achieve One of my favorite lines at the moment is that some of our best teachers don't mark all their books Absolutely, but also but even if you haven't got some stuff done today Yeah, I can guarantee all of you will have done an enormous amount of great things So can I encourage you to go home thinking about what you have achieved? You know pupils, isn't it? We tend to focus in on the misbehaving ones and we think about the vast majority that have been brilliant all day Yeah, it's that it's the nature of the sector in some ways that we tend to kind of Bring ourselves down to worry about all what we haven't achieved rather than celebrating everything that we have No, I when I first got interested in teacher workload. There was not a lot of evidence And I'm clutching dates here 2010 where I really start to get interested and it was very difficult to find stuff And I know you've got a reference to a study that you're going to just put up on the slide next What have you been discovering in your journey with teacher workload and well-being? So in terms of our job come on to those references in a minute and I'll finish my house in a minute as well For but but we last year actually we did our own 8,000 by 8,000 staff took a national survey with us and I guess what it showed Was that senior leaders give the lowest scores It's actually slightly different to our surveys that we do with schools where they tend to perform a little bit higher And it's middle leaders that tend to give the lowest scores in the surveys that we run directly with schools And I don't know if that's because senior leaders sometimes when somebody's asking them Anonymously about the sector whether they perhaps are a little more unguarded when they're asked about their own school And they feel a bit more of a loyalty To it We also saw actually over Covid up until September October last year. We actually saw scores going up, right? Well What kind of question when the leaders feel senior leaders the middle leaders score themselves low What type of question is being asked? Well, so we use the health and safety executives indicated to and we use that in our national survey The reason we chose that and we glad that we did now because when we get on to number 11 It is recognized by the new well-being charter But it's the one I saw in that school in Northern Ireland So I can't I can't actually Give myself any credit for choosing it It was just I guess one of those lucky things where I saw something It measures 35 questions and it measures what I call the culture of a school It's the things that leaders can do something about Particularly senior leaders its demands that are placed on them where they perhaps is called the lowest Because what we see with senior leaders often is they're trying to protect the rest of their staff So one of their things is, you know, I come across a couple of duties. So other people don't have to They'll not eat lunch. So other people don't have to and whilst I understand that it cannot be a long-term solution Because basically people just get burnt out burnt out. Yeah, so it's how we help and you know big message for boards and Governors as well as senior leaders themselves is Actually, how do we kind of start to think of senior leaders as staff because often it's almost like senior leaders And then they're looking after staff well-being rather than actually they're part of Staff as well and I'm quite disappointed in some ways because it's the only thing that's been called a sub Well, it's only thing I saw that was called a sub strategy So when you write something called sub, it's almost almost makes my eyes Not as important as important This should be Can you talk us through the evidence that you've got? Yeah, yeah, well just I will just jump on to that. So The second bit I just gonna say on this is and I like the house model That we've got here. So did is most people starting that first and second for first because it's easier So they'll do the treats. They'll put on a well-being day. They'll do some pampering. They'll do some activities They'll put some training on Understandably in a way because it is easier the challenge We're starting there's nothing wrong with any of those things and actually for people that need support We've got some mental health issues or other things. We absolutely have to support them whether that's employee assistance schemes Direct into the education supports free helpline that everybody in In over here can that access for free? But it's just not these aren't the places to start because once I've eaten my cake, you know, or I've had my activity I've been pampered for a day and I turn up the following Monday, you know, nothing's changed So everything we do has really got to be focused on causes and change. So let me just talk about the evidence then So I'm just going to put three three bits of evidence up this this was a quite an old piece now 2007 from Birkbeck College and work life support Around 800 schools overall and it showed a statistically significant improvement in stats and GCSE results in line with teacher self-reported staff well-being The big challenge with this one and we've got quite a bit of research in education is that people can't prove a causal link In other words, what we don't know is it is staff well-being better because student results are better or is student Or does staff well-being Better staff well-being improve student results And so that's kind of a piece last year the teacher development trust brought out a paper, which actually looked at 30 different papers And they basically concluded the quality of teachers working conditions has a clear consistent relationship with student attainment and They're starting to see the cause of impact So again, they're both interesting. Happy to share the links to those as well For people to see but I think we can start to see there is queer Where I like to look and where I think there's more evidence in business, but particularly the health sector and that that Evidence from the health sector pretty much all Research in the health sector has demonstrated the causal link between staff self-reported well-being and multiple outcomes So that includes things like staff absenteeism turnover staff cover spend All things we can translate into education and also patient satisfaction infection and mortality rates So again things we can put into outcomes So we can very confidently say that the higher that the hospital staff self-report their well-being The pet the better patient outcomes will be It's very interesting again, you know my thoughts here, you know, I read I read at least the top two on the screen and the You know how this might be broken down by you know demographics poverty, etc. That if you've got great staff well-being but working in the very challenging area Can you still achieve good outcomes or are there certain things against you or you know So you mentioned that casual link and by now I'm picking yeah, I think they I think but obviously outcomes are all comparative to history I guess in a way so Can you can you push up those attainment, you know, so those in more challenging schools more challenging areas May not get to the level of some of those that are more privileged But actually compared to maybe where they were a year or two three years ago and sort of pushing up I think is absolutely And kind of proven by this And I guess the other thing that this health research showed the two other things that it showed was the impact of the financial costs And we know from both DfE zone figures and it might you know ask or another's that the savings can be Significant it's interesting now because less and less schools are spending perhaps on supply cover the way they did From a financial point of view and also because actually they can't find the supply cover Around Also good as I say, but it has a different cost doesn't there's not a financial one But in the case of large secondary schools some of these figures from my school was showing in the hundreds of thousands of pounds That were being spent and even for smaller schools So there's particularly savings and I think the other two the other couple of things to say is So I do the bit the research said was that the importance of monitoring employee well-being and how when it was monitored as a result Resources were targeted areas known to be problematic the differences that made as well and of course for schools It also helps with things your pre-inspection Particularly off-stead because they only ones have got a leadership and management judgment that touches on staff well-being But as we come out of Kobe, I would have thought most of the inspection regimes are going to start to have more of a Look at this important area. So Well, we don't want to talk about that do we? One of my favorite activities school leader was you know investors and people Offers a great model for people to follow the teacher development trust and Reminded to everyone that we're going to look at Wells be well these platform shortly and Mark, can we go into the 11? Just before you do mark just remind everyone that we're going to give away a Licence a discounted license to access Mark's software so we'll come to that at the end But stay tuned stay watching and as a reminder if you want to leave a question on Twitter Facebook or YouTube All you need to do is add a comment and it will come through on our Screen this side and I'll pose that question to mark. Sorry mark. Let's go into the lab It's not just saying so you're right. This is the DFA's answer to keeping for more people in schools It before we just jump on there, of course, they do two things in there as well DFA set out their own commitments to well-being and It's interesting that they talk about how they're going to build in Well-being to the things that they do but they kind of let themselves down slightly with the words where appropriate after it Which kind of makes me chuckle a bit as to think well where can it ever not be appropriate to build it in But one challenge to people in schools is look They put in writing what they're prepared to do if they are not living up to it and they're not at times still Then we need to shout out hold them to account because they've put it in writing now So if you're on a Friday night and you get something in asking for a ridiculous response You know then, you know now you've got something to say no I'm not going to and I've got some reasons and some challenge around it and of course off-stead for those of us inspected by them in England I've also set out some of their Myth-busting again about what you don't have to do. So again, it's worth making sure people aren't doing things that they need to do and These are the 11 commitments that Ross talked about at the beginning and as you say Quite a quite a big number So it's where to start and I'm going to suggest that these three are the places to start Some of you might be surprised that I haven't said number two and I'll come on to that for the reasons that are kind of intimated or already But you know making sure leaders have the right tools is likely to lead to the delivery of many of the others Because it is going to prioritize mental health it is going to start to cover how they communicate and it should give staff a greater voice and More of them as well protect a leading well-being because it's not a substrategy and we need to put it front and center and Then measuring where you are now to celebrate strengths and focus on priorities as well as track progress I'm sure you're gonna expect me to say that we're a measurement company But everything you do in schools that's important with your students for example You wouldn't dream of not measuring and kind of seeing how they got on So you robustly measure and report and track the impact and if you want to make a difference for staff in this Important area. I'd say actually if you don't know what your current position really is And you don't know the impact of the actions. She's going to take then you're probably not going to arrive at where you want to arrive at Yeah clutching at straws and guessing in the dark And the reason why I haven't put number two on there. That's not to say there aren't some things you should do Mental health first aid is in school Employee assistance schemes are said providing counseling and support to those who need it But the challenge is if you put a lot of effort in here before you've sorted out, you know, number three and the tools for managers You're going to forever be firefighting What you really want is to create a base where your managers understand how to lead well Understand how to support people therefore when you get to look at commitment to you're much more likely to have it sustained And embedded as part of your culture So Really interesting points there and mark and thank you for identifying and which ones you think You should prioritize first I suppose and this list of 11 and Could we take it a little bit further and start to explore? You know what well being well what what your tool can do for me. I'll just come on to the world Let me just cover a I just because I just want to give a little bit of value in where to focus along alongside the Teacher, sorry the well-being charter then I'll come on to well be next after this slide But this professor, sir carry Cooper You may or may not have come across him people on the on the call one of the UK's leading Organizational well-being experts great cowboy name, you know, really really good And but this is one of his quotes and he kind of leads poor well-being in a way at the the feet of leaders and To a large extent I agree and now this isn't casting any blame People and it's very hard to get this bit right in the education sector Given how line management is structured You know if you think about that first leadership appointment particularly for teaching staff because they usually continue to carry on 90 to 95% of a previous job teaching and You know, so it's going to be the time for one-to-ones to give support to others and for all the leadership actions that I take of a granted in other Sectors and suddenly we're going to be asking them to do as part of the charter You know that CPD for soft skills that he's talking about is rarely provided and often when it is it's kind of shoved in into an insect day or a Twilight session with very little thought about Follow-up and how do we embed and build this into the the school culture and of course this is all commitment three and how we help people But the challenge is if people haven't got time how you do it And I just want to put forward one one thought of how to look at this particular important area And that is really through How do you help people understand those behaviors and competences that will make a difference? So they don't necessarily have to do more workload, but they can perhaps think about how they behave and one way to look at it is through these Competencies that came out of Goldsmiths University of London Funded by health and safety executive investing people in the chartering spirit of personal development And I think there are great self-awareness For for both new leaders, but those that perhaps haven't had the cbd not coming in things like our national qualifications either Which kind of leaves alone. I think too much leading people which is where well being effectively I'm up within within this framework and and Could you just identify one or two? How do we how do we define soft skills? Yeah, so in in this one, it's um, there's basically behaviors here and then I'll come on to the skills so these are things like talking about people behind their backs about not leading consistently every day about Criticizing more your praise about taking feedback yourself as personal criticism And really a kind of list a really good checklist of things that actually We know that if leaders behave like this they are likely to Call stress to the people they lead Whereas if they understand these behaviors and can deliver them well They're likely to engage them and reduce or even present prevent that stress So there were four iterations of research that produced these and they're funded by quite Significant players and interestingly they're actually Provided for free for charted institute personnel development the HR functions Members on their own website, but I very rarely come across people who've who've used them We've built them into our toolkit as for self-assessment questionnaires for our Our things but again, it's kind of like yes, of course We've got to find some time But they self-assessment questionnaires and they need to skills like empathy and trust And coaching and various things which are probably the three biggest behaviors We see that make a difference for people, you know, can I coach people? Do I have a level of empathy and how how well am I trusted because of course trust is reciprocal And if you don't trust people they won't trust you back And what's really interesting about all these is they're all Competencies that you can develop, you know born with them, you know, you can learn them and and learn how to do them So we're talking about all staff not just school leaders here Yeah, we are talking about all staff, but but obviously we really want to start with leaders Because clearly they're the ones that are going to have the biggest impact, of course So I start with the senior team trying to cascade that out people see the difference It's contagious I mean the biggest the biggest win I'll tell you but the biggest win That I've seen and I would always encourage is leaders catching people doing things right, you know teachers Teachers are great at this in the classroom, but we seem to come out of the classroom and forget about it because we're also busy rushing around Schools are great at shout-outs Email, thank yous, but less good at catching people in the moment Now there's lots of reasons for that some some are Obvious like people are spreading classrooms with timetable. We don't get to see each other very busy busy people Absolutely, but interestingly, you know, I was a graduate trainee in the high facts And at the age of 23, which was 30 odd years ago, but I'm probably more I was actually trained and the catchy title of this particular training was managing by walking about So I was actually trained how to go out and just walk around Bring those that title back into the work Absolutely. So let me let me move on and just talk a little bit about Surveys and measurement and after measurement because obviously it's it's A commitment 11 is, you know, use recognized tools and measure trends and progress over time And for me, if I've said it, it is where to start because if you don't know where you are now, it's very difficult to take the right actions So lots of schools probably the biggest competitor for us in is Doing yourself and there's nothing wrong with doing yourself and I'd rather you did something yourself Um, but if it's a financial decision, you'd be surprised how affordable things are and getting help from a third party in terms of You know Reducing your workload as well as making sure you've got actionable information and that staff realize it's anonymous So you're going to get probably more accurate information. So I would always suggest you have a look at it for those that For whatever reason can't afford to do There is and we'll we'll share this we do have some training for people Everything you ever want to know about running a staff well-being survey Which gives you the 14 steps you can follow yourself and things to look for The key things that people miss out are benchmarks Um, so if you don't have a benchmark um, and you just have A set of scores you are unlikely to focus on the right areas because not all scores are made equal And sometimes higher scores will be lower comparative score and vice versa So you can end up putting lots of effort into areas that you're not going to make a big impact on whilst ignoring some low hanging fruit For example, and there are obviously other things you should do before you even jump on a survey You know look at your school data give you clues, you know your your retention rate your staff absence rates You probably all do exit interviews, but good idea to also do stay interviews You know let's ask staff before they leave And why this thing in our school and how can we kind of do that? So there's lots of data you can collect before you use a recognized survey But the beauty about a survey and particularly if you use the same one is you can track trends and a lot of We've invented we've added the ability for schools now to add some of their own questions without compromising that The evidence base or the tracking there's one of the challenges we saw was lots of schools do surveys But they keep changing the questions. Yeah, so it's different happening outside and therefore you can't you can't I like that. I like the concept of a stay interview Yeah, yeah, it's not I don't I don't think it's that new but I think it's probably something that's not particularly done It's a bit like the same having confidence in a line manager, isn't it to ask the people you lead How would you like to be led? You know, what do you like? What do you like about my style? Yeah, what would you change now? That's not me saying I'm going to change because I might say well the reason I do this is this and this is why But it leads to a two-way conversation around leadership style I've done a lot of work in schools in the past on psychometrics and looking and helping leaders understand that You can't behave in the same way with all your staff either Because you know, some people have big picture thinkers. Some people love the detail Um, and actually if you use the same conversations with those you won't get you'll get the best outcome potentially from one But not the other so as leaders understanding different behaviors is is really important So let me just share a little bit about, um Let me just finish on the charter then I'll come on to wellby They're running the survey what it's not just the charter But you'll see there from the national foundation of education research that they're recommending you should do that as well I'll I'll leave this slide in and I'm going to jump straight into into wellby but signing up to the charter is is absolutely easy Um, you just have to send an email with your school details to them and go I'm signing up I think the decision to sign up or not is the one that you need to spend a bit more time over Um, so in other words, you should do this if you're committed to action Don't do it so you can put a badge on your website or to say we're part of it because people will still see through it Um, so this is one of those things where you have to mean it Yeah Yeah, uh, you know, so let me just tell you a little bit about um, wellby then so We came along and because I saw worked with these schools and I saw that most people are ad hocly Dealing with staff well being they're jumping in out of it. They're running a survey They don't get to then do anything with the results because it's not busy Or because they don't have the expertise in school to be able to manage it Um, so really we're talking about systemizing. How do you create a view where you measure? You take action you implement you follow up you Embed and then you repeat so you can see what's what's happening I know and whether or not you choose to sign up to the charter or not If you want to improve the well-being for your staff systemizing the approach Whether it's with those or doing it yourself is really important It's also important because it enables you to communicate with staff as well Because we forget that staff are quite greedy and I don't mean in a horrible way And if you if you've done something for them six months ago You all you need to remind them you're on a journey and keep them going saying look So last time we used some this and this but being cyclical really helps you do that So you can see some of the things we we we do as I said, we've systemized the process It's evidence built survey. It comes from a government body. It's been independently evaluated It's the health and safety executives indicator tool is based on the management standards Which many of you might come across from a stress risk assessment purpose. You probably come across it It's also recognized by the staff well-being charter and for those inspected by them aligns brilliantly with off-stairs In that top right hand top right hand side mark, you've got it. You can break it down by support staff middle Yeah, so Our focus is to reduce your workload Um, so we've got filters in there So as well as benchmarks against schools and the health and safety executives own for a cross-sector So, you know what really is good or not We provide Filters both in the core platform against those six as well as time at school And whether people are full of part-time because we want you to not kind of go. Well, that's my results We want you to know who to who to celebrate and who to focus on for impact In our premium offer as long as adding your own questions. You can choose your own filters So if you're a bigger school and you want to go down to your english department There are safeguards built in for anonymity So an only report wants a certain number of people in a field to take the survey. It won't really expose people So heat maps kind of tell you who Who's who to focus with and then we provide a detailed report We've probably the biggest thing that schools wanted which is recommended actions So we're actually telling you the sorts of things that other schools have done If they've got score similar to yours that have made a a difference And as you can see at the top right, you can track your progress in Dashboard and you can track your progress by those filters as well. So you know How you're doing and so when you've taken action and you repeat you can see well, did that action work Do I want to do more of it? Was it a waste? We provide things like a presentation immediately to download so you can share very quickly with staff Because one of the biggest frustrations I have is when people do surveys and they don't share the results That both will reduce future participation rate And it will also lead to people thinking you've got something to hide Yeah, so you have to be sharing the results Within the within the platform. I'm sure there's an opportunity for schools to connect or to learn from each other Is that something that the resource can offer? um So there are opportunities for them to two-way communicate with their own staff anonymously In terms of building that wider community, we work with a lot of multi-academy trust now and so there's the opportunity there I'll take your suggestion Ross has been a fantastic idea for us to add on. We've got a Development as long as as long as ago and there's some really interesting things Come in this year. I think we're already a market leading Product, uh, well, so I think I know I think by the end of this year will be will be the world's Best for education a bold statement, but I know what we've There we go. We've got not coming down. We've got a good People watching from teacher talk. We can there we go. So, uh, do you want to talk us through this mark? Yeah, so it's really So for a small a smaller school 247 pounds plus the at for a year subscription Which includes the survey includes a results review call afterwards includes all the filters the benchmarks I'm gonna ask me. What's a small school? So lesson 200 on our website. You can see so lesson 200 pupils. We do it by pupil ed tech The highest price Is 647 pounds for schools? 1500 Pound people Yeah, the premium is obviously a little bit higher than that about 40 percent higher which adds the Ability to your own questions and filters, but because we know schools are really loving it. Um, we Uh, you can have that for the first year There is a second to a gold well will be voice that you get access to which allows you to have anonymous ongoing Conversations something we created for schools Because they asked us to do that as when covid hit they didn't want to do the big surveys They wanted the small kind of it. It's a bit like anonymous email groups of eight or more staff to see feedback Etc and and the toolkit and I guess I guess for us what we've gone down the route for schools We think this is the right solution. Um, one of the alternatives is a pulse survey and um, obviously there are those out there using pulse surveys I think affordability wise we're probably if not the we're definitely one of the most affordable Yeah, I mean mark I get I get to see thousands and thousands of bits of software in my life as a teacher blogger And I can reassure people watching that this is good value. Um, so mark people watching if they're interested Can they just quote teacher toolkit and they can get that 40? Yeah, they can just quote um, speak to us quote teacher toolkit I'll come back to raise it or you've got a link there which will forward to you Anybody coming along that demo link? So if you want to see what it's about you can book yourself a demo 30 minutes We don't bite we won't force you to buy We'll just show you how we're supporting schools and and and let you have a proper look at the platform As well and take you through it We also manage the whole invitation side. Um, so that both increases participation So I'd love to say look by using those you have you have no work But we haven't quite worked that one out But we think we massively reduce workload. You don't have to do any analysis of figures. We provided all for you We'll manage the invitations The only work really is that right the front end because we upload your staff records on a spreadsheet so Workload straight away. Um, and I guess, you know building that house that analogy that you've used you're given I'll quote the kind of third bullet point of the well-being chart Are you giving already the managers the tools and resources they need? To support well-being so, um, I'll come back to you mark in a second for people watching any questions In the chat box on your youtube or twitter, um, and I'll pose them to mark on your behalf This is your last chance. I'll put one or two links back up on the screen There is the link for the dfe charter People who have signed up to get this recording I'll circulate mark slides as well as the dfe charter and my thoughts on that also Mark any any final thoughts? No, I think, you know I just encourage people to put staff first, you know to think about it logically both as a staff member Now this doesn't mean we're not focused on pupils, you know, um, it's not it's not an either or yeah, it is a The best way to deliver what you need for your pupils is to put your staff first Um intuitively, I think it it's quite obvious, but the evidence backs you know, particularly that from the health sector You know, if you just imagine I'm going to say that when you go to a hospital You know one of the things you might want to check if you're going into an operation is the staff well-being Of those people in the hospital because it's quite frightening to think that if it's not very good or lower You're more likely to die, you know when you start thinking about that I mean what I've learned from this session is that I guess the need I I suppose a few years ago I was quite nervous about the systematic process behind tracking well-being but you know in an ed tech world where things are quite easy to manage and give you this You know in the world where we're all immersed by data Um, it allows you to put your resources in the right place. So, um, I think Yeah, the idea of this is not to create league tables. Um, you know, just it's not about accountability Scores may change and uh, you know, um Things happen in the outside world bereavements happen Uh, uh in a school community your off-stead comes in just before you run and it could make it go higher or lower Yeah, so you cannot ignore context when you're interpreting results and we will do that As as as we're going through so it's really important for those of you that might be multi-academy trusts or local authorities or clusters or groups The other thing we do is we offer a group dashboard and we we're just launching actually the ability to share those results across schools But maintaining the anonymity. So all right, so You can self benchmark against other schools in your locality, but without it being a league table the whole point To give you clues as to how you're doing but to allow you to improve at your pace And doing the things that you can do with your capacity not to try and add to the accountability by going Data be very useful for a multi-academy trust leader Absolutely, I've got this slide here. I was supposed to show it at the start But I've kept a bit of my data to the end I just thought I'd just put up on the screen where people have signed from so you can see There's an interest in this from people across the world from my teacher toolkit network I guess if we zoom into the uk at least, you know, because we're talking here from an english Context and I'm sure there are many people watching in international schools that are interested in this Mark, maybe could just give us how how your software will work in an international context Yeah, we're just about to pilot in the u.s. Um, which is quite interesting So if any of you are from the u.s. And you're interested in piloting Let us let us know we've got one district there and we're just talking to a few others The good news is particularly because you can name your filters yourself if you do happen to have some Different topics or subject headings or various other bits we can cater for those so Whenever you are in the world, we'd love to hear from you And and and support you the other thing I should have mentioned as well is look guys We've been leaving our product. So this isn't a gimmick. Nobody's ever claimed on it But look, we offer a full money back guarantee and we do that to take some of the risk out out of it At 85 percent of schools that I've used us How and run a second survey with us and we've got a very high renewal rate I've seen improved scores. So we can point to things we've For those of you want to see some headteachers on our talk about it. They're on our website We've got three or four k studies both from just just writing one for wikamabi You know, we've got some actually while we're there and we're wrapped things up. So, yeah, we've got we've got some of the We've got all sorts of schools. We've got some of the top independent schools in the country We've got some great secondary schools. We've got some grammar schools. We've got lots of primary schools We've got infant schools, you know, we've got a small number of colleges Because they we came to them a little bit later. So whatever you're You know, whatever you're working in if you think this is of interest, you know, come on reach reach out to us We'd love to show you how we help So, um, thank you very much mark. I'm going to finish with a quote from my favorite politician Mr. Nick Gibb who actually wrote in the forward of the well-being charter We want to see a sector that is free from mental health discrimination Guided by emotional intelligence and characterized by supportive and nurturing cultures. So there you go everyone Thanks for watching. Thanks for your time mark No, no, it's good. And of course nick nicks forward has now been removed and replaced by the education secretary in the update in november But but it was a very good quote. It was a good quote. There you go Right everybody. So I hope you well I hope I've given you a little flavor into the the benefits of well-being as well as The department for education charter and how your school can start in the you know The words of mark build the house from the ground up Um, so I will see you soon mark. Thank you for your time Now, thank you very much for having me really enjoyed it and thank you to everybody who's attended I know taking a chunk of time out like this out of a day Is is not an easy thing and I see that day-to-day talking to the schools. I do So thank you very much All right. Thank you mark. Bye everybody. See you soon. Take care. Thanks. Bye. Bye