inDEPTH
TIME FOR ACTION ON MENTAL HEALTH
Good mental health and wellbeing are intrinsic to effective professional practice. Alan Thomson assesses the pressures facing further education staff and the sector’s efforts to create healthier workplaces for teachers, managers and learners.
t is a curse and a blessing of caring professions like teaching that practitioners will frequently go the extra mile rather than let their learners down. It is entirely natural, given that the ‘outputs’ in education are people, not widgets or profits, that there is an emotional dimension to, and investment in, the professional identities and practices of educators. But external pressures, such as a lack of funding
for further education – leading to redundancies, increased workloads and pay constraint – can quickly turn professional dedication toxic. It can lead to rising levels of stress, anxiety and absenteeism, all of which, ultimately, impact on outcomes for learners and institutional reputations. A survey of 1,000 SET members, commissioned by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) and carried out by the Education Support charity, found that the overall wellbeing score of further education teachers was 46, using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWS). This aligns with the score for school teachers, and both fall well short of a WEMWS score of almost 50 for the English population in general. According to the 2019
Teacher Wellbeing Index,
also conducted by Education Support (in partnership with YouGov), the proportion of teachers reporting work-related stress rose from 64 per cent in 2018 to 73 per cent in 2019. The Education Support helpline, which is free to all teachers (see details at the end of the article) dealt with a record 9,615 cases between April 2018 and the end of March 2019, the largest number in a 12-month period in the charity’s history. Sinéad McBrearty, chief executive of Education Support, says: “We are seeing overworking becoming quite normal across education, and definitely in FE. “If we don’t get a grip on the level of work we are
going to end up with an exhausted and burnt-out workforce.” McBrearty makes a direct link between the professional practice of teachers and trainers, and physical and mental wellbeing. “One of the things I am at pains to point out in FE is that if you are a professional it means you being as healthy as you can be,” she says. “None of us performs at our best when unwell. Self-care is an act of conscientious
professionalism, not an act of self- indulgence.”
12 ISSUE 39 • SPRING 2020 inTUITION
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