ACER Social and Emotional Wellbeing Survey
A core component of Abbotsleigh’s academic care program has been to integrate a number of review mechanisms which enable staff to gain a deeper understanding of how initiatives are helping to improve social and emotional wellbeing. Having the ability to collect, analyse and interpret data enables teachers and academic care leaders, such as Year Coordinators, to understand key issues and to track the increasing efficacy of students as they participate in programs designed to build relationship skills, increase confidence and raise awareness to issues such as cyber safety.
As part of their plan to audit the school’s Wellbeing Academic Care program, Abbotsleigh collaborated with Professor Michael Bernard and ACER to conduct a specialised Social and Emotional Wellbeing survey. The survey covers social, emotional and behavioural outcomes and can be administered to students from K to Year 12. We elected to administer to girls in Years 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 as these years (apart from year 11) are the years where Naplan is used so that this Wellbeing measure would complement the academic measure.
The easy-to-administer survey can be completed either online or by pencil and paper and schools are given a comprehensive report which allows insight into wellbeing levels of the student population. The report also identifies areas of strength and weakness in cohorts which can then be further reviewed by pastoral care staff.
Presentations on the data to teachers allowed staff to understand differences between and amongst year groups and was an excellent spring board for follow up discussions with faculties, year group and specialised teaching teams. Abbotsleigh is focusing on building upon the relative strengths of their students as well as opening conversations into areas that require more attention in future academic care programs.
In order to enrich the data set which contextualises the results available for girls’ schools, it is hoped that other girls’ schools will consider incorporating the survey into the review of their pastoral care programs. At present, it is not possible to compare data from girls’ schools with data from girls in co-educational schools which limits understanding of the value that an all-girls’ education can bring. The participation of other schools from the Alliance of Girls’ Schools would allow for more meaningful comparisons to be drawn and encourage girls’ schools to more clearly and confidently articulate the importance of their academic and pastoral learning environments.
Judith Poole
Headmistress of Abbotsleigh