WELLBEING Running on goodwill
In his regular column this month for Education Today MARK SOLOMONS, founder of triple ERA Award-winning Welbee, and Edu Intelligence – the first AI tool that connects stakeholder feedback, documents and wider school data, and most importantly, makes sense of it for schools, groups and trusts – discusses what the latest global data is telling us about our schools, and what leaders can do about it.
The policy pipeline is adding to the load at the same time. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill introduces new duties around attendance, safeguarding and cooperation with children’s social care. The SEND White Paper brings a three-tier model of support, an Inclusive Mainstream Fund and the phased introduction of digital Individual Support Plans – the most significant change to SEND administration in a generation. Both are right in intent. Both will increase what SENCOs, DSLs and pastoral leads are required to track, evidence and report, in schools that are already operating without spare capacity. Alongside this, AI tools are arriving in schools faster than the INSET time to embed them well – adding a layer of adoption pressure on top of an unchanged existing workload.
Schools that invest now in connected data systems, platforms that link attendance, behaviour, pastoral notes and provision records automatically, rather than requiring staff to manually stitch them together, will protect both their staff and their ability to meet these requirements.
Three things leaders can do now
The Tes report is specific about what staff need most. 66% identify work-life balance as the area where schools most urgently need to improve. 52% point to recognition and appreciation. Half of classroom teachers rate leadership support negatively. This is a significantly different picture from what senior leaders typically perceive. That gap is where most of the work is, and none of what follows requires a new budget line.
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e do not need another report to tell us that staff wellbeing in education is in serious trouble. The evidence has been in front of us for years. It shows up not just in the annual statistics, but in the staffroom, in the appraisal cycle, in the ECTs who leave before their second year is out, and in the experienced colleagues who quietly step back from any thought of leadership because they cannot face what the role has become. The problem is not awareness. The problem is that the system has not changed to match what we know. The Tes Teacher Wellbeing Report 2026 draws on more than 2,800 educators across 196 countries. It does not rewrite this story. What it does is give us further information about why it persists and points clearly to where leaders can make a difference.
The number that reframes everything
The headline findings will feel familiar. 73% of respondents cite workload as their primary source of stress. 58% name student behaviour as a major pressure. Half do not plan to stay in teaching long term. But the figure that gives all the others their proper context is this: only 4% of teachers are able to work within their contracted hours. Not because teachers lack the skills to manage their time, but because the role as currently designed cannot be done in the hours for which staff are paid. Nearly two-thirds work more than six additional hours each week beyond their directed time. More than a third work nine or more extra hours and over 14% 69 hours every week. Those hours go on lesson planning, marking and administration – not optional extras but the core of the job. The Tes report frames this as a profession running on personal sacrifice rather than sustainable conditions. Commitment is being mistaken for capacity. Schools are functioning because staff are absorbing the gap between what the system provides and what the job demands. That gap is now being asked to stretch further still.
A tighter squeeze with more to absorb
School budgets are under greater pressure than at any point in recent years. Employer National Insurance and pension increases have landed on already stretched staffing costs, while roles are falling, and many trusts are making hard decisions about headcount and CPD. The cost-of-living crisis affects our staff as acutely as the families they serve.
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Audit directed time before adding anything new. Identify two tasks consuming the most staff time for the least direct pupil impact. Excessive scrutiny cycles, duplicated data entry, cover that routinely eats into PPA, twilight sessions that could be an email. This is where workload often accumulates without someone consciously deciding it should. Remove or reduce one per term, and apply the same test before anything new arrives: what does this displace?
Build recognition into how you operate, not just when you remember to. A specific, timely face to face acknowledgement from a leader, naming what someone did and why it mattered, has more impact on how supported staff feel than a whole-school wellbeing event. Ask your SLT and middle leaders to commit to one specific, observed acknowledgement every day as a start. Not a general well done, but something particular and specific. It takes two minutes and compounds over time in a way that a wellbeing afternoon does not.
Close the gap between feedback and survey data and your response. If staff are telling you that behaviour or pastoral load is driving their stress, the answer is a structural one. A review of how incidents are escalated, how duties are distributed, or where the timetable is creating pressure that could be redesigned. Commit to a visible response within a defined and short timeframe of any survey closing: not a full action plan, but a clear message that names what was heard and something that is changing. That speed and specificity tells staff whether their feedback is worth giving.
The question that can’t wait
The Tes report asks whether education systems will act in time to match the commitment of teachers with conditions that make staying worthwhile. Half of respondents do not plan to remain in teaching long term. That is not a recruitment problem on the horizon. It is a retention crisis already under way, driven by conditions that leaders have more power to address through small steps, than the weight of national policy sometimes suggests they have. We cannot change funding settlements or hold back a legislative timetable. We can decide what kind of schools and trusts we run. In a profession running on goodwill, the answer is not to ask for more of it.
For further information and practical advice, visit: u
https://welbee.co.uk
June 2026
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