WELLBEING Why 2026 has to be the year we tackle
the root causes of stress MARK SOLOMONS, founder of triple ERA Award-winning Welbee, an on-line evaluation and staff wellbeing improvement tool, and Edu Intelligence, the first AI tool delivering data analytics and recommended actions from combining stakeholder feedback and wider school data, discusses how to take action to truly prioritise wellbeing.
The conversation has also moved from recruitment to retention. With the numbers already leaving each year and 29% of staff recently reporting they have taken active steps to leave the profession, our priority must be keeping the experienced, talented people we already have.
The desire for ‘flexible working’ is growing. In many other sectors, flexibility is much more standard, and many trusts and schools are trying different steps to catch up. This isn’t simply about part-time hours; it’s about giving staff a sense of autonomy and trust. If we don’t find ways to offer the flexibility that modern life demands, we will continue to lose our best people to sectors that do.
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ow we are a few weeks into 2026, the conversations I’m having with trust and school leaders around wellbeing have shifted. It doesn’t need reports such as the latest 2025 Teacher Wellbeing Index to highlight the ongoing problems. We all know there is an issue. The biggest challenge is the intensity of the job itself and the systemic drivers that are pushing dedicated professionals to the brink.
As we settle into the new year, we have to avoid treating symptoms, with the focus being on addressing the causes. We need to talk about the emotional weight our staff are carrying and include the link between their health and the students they teach.
For a long time, the workload conversation usually revolved around administrative tasks – marking, planning, and data entry. While those remain important, the headline news for 2026 is much more around the sheer emotional toll of the role.
We are seeing what I call the ‘Gap-Filling’ toll. With external social services and other agencies stretched to their limit, schools have become a crucial part of the frontline for social care. Recent news stories suggest a significant number of school staff now provide such things as food, clothing, and emotional support to students and families because there is simply nowhere else for them to go.
This leads to emotional fatigue, and it is becoming a primary driver of burnout. It is no coincidence that Senior Leaders are identified as the highest-risk group for stress-related illness. They are the ones absorbing the shocks from the community so their staff don’t have to, but that shield is cracking.
We are also navigating the early days of the new inspection framework. The launch of ‘Report Cards’, replacing the reductive single-word grades, appeared to be received as a welcome move. However, the prevailing emotion right now is uncertainty.
Staff are waiting to see if the promised focus on staff wellbeing in these inspections is genuine or if it will become another tick-box exercise. I am already hearing and seeing comments that say there has been no real change, while others say the experience of the new inspection was for the better. The jury is still out.
This brings us to Psychological Safety. Trust and schools are being asked to prove their culture is safe by creating an environment where a staff member can say, “I am struggling,” without fear of judgment. That is the only metric that matters. We cannot talk about staff wellbeing in isolation from our students. The two are inextricably linked. The news for students is currently dominated by the Attendance-Health Cycle.
New research released this month has solidified what many of us already knew: poor mental health causes absence, and absence worsens mental health. We are seeing record levels of Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA). These aren’t children who are simply skipping school; they are children for whom the school environment has become a source of overwhelming anxiety.
To make matters harder, poverty and housing insecurity are arriving in our classrooms as physical barriers to learning. Charities like Shelter have highlighted how temporary accommodation is leading to tiredness and an inability to concentrate. Teachers are reporting that basic physiological needs—sleep and food—are becoming the biggest hurdles to wellbeing. You cannot teach a child who is exhausted or hungry, and trying to do so takes a massive toll on the teacher.
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www.education-today.co.uk
These are some of the key areas dominating the wellbeing agenda for the sector: • Ofsted: The new Report Card and whether the staff wellbeing criteria will lead to genuine cultural change.
• Mental Health Support: Are Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) reaching your school yet, or are they still a distant promise?
• Leadership Support: There is a growing recognition of the need for professional supervision and coaching for Headteachers to prevent burnout.
• SEND: The mandatory training for all staff on SEND support is shifting responsibility from the SENCO to the classroom teacher. This is positive for inclusion but adds another layer of pressure if not managed well.
While the challenges are systemic, it doesn’t mean we can’t take action. • Acknowledge the emotional load: We can’t just talk about wellbeing as self-care. We have to acknowledge that our staff are doing difficult, emotional work and consistently invest in things like supervision and reflective practice, where staff can process what they are dealing with.
• Prioritise psychological safety: Make it safe to speak up. If a member of staff tells you they are struggling or overwhelmed, look at your process for dealing with this. Does it encourage open dialogue, or people to hide their struggles until they become ill and add to your absence figures.
• Focus on the basics for students: We can’t fix the housing crisis, though we can advocate for many of the statutory changes proposed in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, though we do have to make sure changes don’t add more emotional challenge. Ensuring our students are not hungry and ready to learn is one of the most effective ways to reduce low-level disruption and improve the classroom environment.
• Measure what matters: Don’t guess how your staff are feeling. Use evidence-based tools to measure the specific drivers of stress in your trust and school. Ask them about their workload, yes, but also ask them about their autonomy, their support, and their emotional capacity.
2026 offers us a chance to do better. Not to continue to raise awareness and talk about the problems, but to build the systems that will solve it.
For further information and practical advice, visit: u
https://welbee.co.uk
February 2026
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