WELLBEING
School improvement without burnout: wellbeing matters more than ever
Mark Solomons, creator of Welbee, the online evaluation and staff wellbeing improvement tool, and six times winner in the ERA Awards, discusses the importance of wellbeing for school improvement.
collaboration means staff help to create the School Improvement or Development Plan. If a proposed scheme demands extra hours of work, staff can highlight this, prompting adjustments or the removal of work in another area. Teachers and support staff are active partners, rather than passive recipients of directives. When educators see their contributions reflected in final decisions, they support changes more wholeheartedly and propose further refinements. Their firsthand knowledge of daily challenges can lead to more practical, enduring solutions that genuinely make a difference.
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chool days are full-on for most staff, so with the Government proposing extra responsibilities and improvement initiatives, it’s understandable that many educators worry about even greater demands on their time.
Effective school improvement doesn’t happen in isolation. Leaders responsible for raising standards across Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) and schools, must ensure that their strategies are data-driven, informed by those who matter most - staff, pupils, and parents - and don’t impact wellbeing. Stakeholder engagement - genuinely listening to staff, parents, and pupils is a powerful way to address real concerns while uniting people around common goals.
Make stakeholder engagement a core part of school improvement
When it comes to changes that drive school improvement, staff, pupils and parents are often consulted retrospectively. Rather than introducing standalone surveys or disparate feedback collection, it’s better to embed opportunities into established processes. For instance, if your trust or school already runs curriculum reviews, integrate questions about workload, professional development, and wellbeing at the same time. Merging data collection reduces the administrative burden.
It’s vital to apply a ‘workload test’ before rolling out any new feedback channel. Will the proposed survey or focus group genuinely add value? Why do you need the information and what will you do with it? When leaders demonstrate respect for staff capacity, trust grows, which helps mitigate burnout.
Use data-driven insights to simplify and improve decisions
Data should underpin improvement plans, although leaders and staff can feel overwhelmed when faced by an avalanche of figures or if information is not easy to find, the aim is to highlight what matters.
To form a coherent picture, combine feedback with other indicators - pupil attendance or staff absence records, staff retention, behaviour logs, and pupil progress. Identifying the link between feedback and specific issues, such as recurring lesson-time disruptions or consistently high workloads in certain departments, enables more targeted interventions, cutting out ineffective ‘catch-all’ measures that waste staff time. When educators see that initiatives respond to well- defined problems, they’re more willing to engage with changes and integrate them into their daily routines.
Close the feedback loop to sustain morale One major misstep in gathering stakeholder views, is letting the input disappear into a void. Staff, parents, or pupils might share concerns about marking burdens or pastoral support gaps, but hear nothing afterwards. This can lead to cynicism or a lowering of trust - people wonder why they bothered to speak up at all. Leaders must show clearly how feedback drives policy or shapes improvement plans. For example, if staff report excessive workload in a particular area, it is important to listen, whether guidelines will be revised or not, and if the budget can’t accommodate certain suggestions, a transparent explanation is better than silence.
Engage staff in planning - not as an afterthought
We talk about staff ‘buy-in’, and true 14
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Build a culture of continuous improvement Continuous improvement isn’t about large, regular and disruptive changes - it’s diagnosing issues early, and clearly and calmly addressing them. Uncovering emerging problems, like confusion over a new digital platform or a spike in playground incidents, can be done with a series of ‘pulse checks’, involving short surveys or quick discussions in staff meetings. Concerns dealt with promptly don’t balloon into crises.
A vision for school improvement: wellbeing first
Although it may sound ambitious to balance high standards with reduced strain on staff, trusts and schools are proving it’s achievable. When leaders systematically seek feedback, address real concerns, and remain transparent about how decisions are made, staff feel validated. This lowers staff turnover - saving on recruitment costs - and results in more consistent classroom instruction for pupils, who in turn benefit from stable relationships with teachers committed to their development. Taken together, these factors foster a strong learning environment. Even small shifts can have significant impacts. Merging staff feedback questions into existing work and streamlining data-collection processes will yield substantial benefits. Smaller steps, repeated consistently, build into a culture where staff, pupils and parents, work together toward shared goals.
Ultimately, school improvement thrives when leaders recognise the centrality of staff wellbeing. By treating teachers, support staff, other leaders and families as partners, leaders build a foundation where everyone feels valued. This inclusive approach ensures that raising standards doesn’t come at the cost of overburdening the people tasked with making progress happen. Instead, it unites the community in a collective effort: one where aspirations for excellence coexist with practical awareness of everyday challenges.
For further information and practical advice, visit:
https://welbee.co.uk
April 2025
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