Work on long-term solutions
In practice, your school may encounter problems that you want to solve now—or at least quickly. For example, low student motivation or safety incidents. Implementing an intervention may then feel like a solution. However, research shows that this is not the complete answer. There is a risk that a single intervention will address only part of the problem, or that its effect will fade after a while. More is needed for an intervention to take root properly at school. For example: How do you ensure that the intervention meets the needs of students and education staff? How do you provide suitable training for teachers, lecturers and other stakeholders so that they can effectively support the intervention? And how do you involve parents in the choice you make? Among other things, it is important to conduct a good analysis beforehand. This need not take much time.
The Well-being Practice Card – From analysis to intervention shows how to choose interventions quickly and practically on the basis of a general analysis.
Benefits of an integrated approach
The strength of a sustainable approach that combines initiatives, actions and measures is that it prevents problems in the long term. Scientific research shows that taking an integrated approach to improving well-being has many benefits. These include better academic performance, improved staff well-being and a reduction in mental health problems among students. Focusing on well-being also offers many opportunities to increase equal opportunities, for example by providing additional support to students who need it. Poverty, chronic stress, traumatic events and discrimination are examples of factors that affect students’ well-being. Many factors lie beyond the school’s direct influence, but schools can play an important role in ensuring that students feel safe.
Strengthen what is going well and adapt what could be improved
If you want to work in an integrated way, it is useful to first map out the current situation using the well-being checklists for primary education and secondary education. They cover various aspects of working integrally on well-being. Filling them in honestly gives you insight into how your school is doing. You can see what is going well, what deserves more attention and what has priority. The starting point here is: strengthen what is going well and adapt what could be improved.
Items on the checklist include: Is there a jointly developed and supported vision of well-being? To what extent is attention paid to the well-being of school staff and professional development? Do lessons address well-being and students growing up in vulnerable circumstances? What does the support structure look like? How does your school involve parents and students? And how does the school work together with care partners?
A vision that fits your school’s values
Another important step in an integrated approach is a long-term vision for well-being that the school staff support. Based on a shared vision, your school can work on planning and incorporate the plans into its policies. Every school has its own ideas about what it considers important. Therefore, examine what does and does not align with your school’s values. Examples of values include safety, talents and independence. The guide Working on well-being based on values describes how to form a vision together with your school team in a structured way, through two meetings. At the end of the second meeting, you and your team will have agreed on concrete action points aimed at working on well-being at school based on the values your team considers most important. This tool was developed for primary and secondary education teams and is suitable for both mainstream and special education.
Quickly develop a shared vision with the help of the guide Working on well-being based on values.
Invest sustainably in well-being
Working on well-being at school is therefore about more than implementing one or more interventions. Ideally, an intervention is part of a broader, sustainable and integrated approach. Which intervention is suitable for your school depends on the specific circumstances. Have you mapped out the current situation and established your vision of well-being, and would you like to take the next step?
In the Sustainable Investment in Well-being Practice Card, you can read more about the next steps you can take: setting goals, determining support needs, organising activities, monitoring, evaluating and embedding.
Ready to get started with an existing integrated approach?
An internationally applied integrated approach is the Health Promoting Schools approach, known in the Netherlands as the Gezonde School approach. In this approach, a school chooses one or more health themes to work on. Well-being is one of these themes.
Read more on the Gezonde School website and get off to a flying start.