We're excited to share with you the first in a series of 'Deep-Dives' into real schools across Australia, who are regularly using wellbeing data to evidence improvement in their wellbeing programs and provide differentiated support to all students.

Tell us about Nichols Point Primary and your wellbeing initiatives?

We are a border-town school on the Victorian side of the NSW / VIC State lines. We have over 400 students with 18 classes, mixed demographics but a fairly familiar spread of social, resilience and anxiety issues. Emotional literacy and self-regulation skills were pretty good but we become part of the Murdoch Children’s Research Insitute Mental Health in Primary Schools Program, to help improve this. I am the Lead Mental Health & Wellbeing Officer.

What were the challenges you were facing?

We’ve run a few wellbeing programs over the years, some have been great, and others missed the mark. The real problem has been consistency and focus. We weren’t sure what areas of the school to focus on and which students, other than our Tier 1 groups, to target with support. Check-ins had been a part of our routines, but it’s not been regular and it’s actually using the information collected meant someone had to measure it and analyse on a spreadsheet. Which was very time consuming. The classroom team had mixed experiences with wellbeing practices so the leadership team felt they would benefit from more consistency and data to help support all students accurately. A stop / start approach with previous wellbeing programs meant there was some hesitancy to try “another new thing” that may distract from academic outcomes. Most importantly the students seemed to be treating wellbeing as “oh they’re keeping tracking us” rather than “they’re asking me about how I’m feeling so they can help”. We needed to change that. Like most other schools we’d been using behaviour and attendance data but that also kept us in the reactive zone. The goal was to identify risk early and prevent disruptions before they happened.

What was the proposed solution?

Life Skills GO is designed to track wellbeing data based on student voice, which was the key for us. It had to be driven by the students and help improve the teacher / student relationship. We focused on delivering the check-ins and the proposal was to have every student in the school checking in at least 3 times per week. We could use the initial data collected as a baseline to work from and then combine with our other datasets (behaviour / attendance) to paint a picture of what was most important. Another element of the proposal was the suggested implementation process for classroom, wellbeing and executive staff. So everyone knew how to put the data to use.

How did you decide on what to do?

We ran a 2 week trial, which the team at Life Skills GO setup and managed for us. I picked 3 teachers, one from each stage so we had a good cross section of the different ages groups. The biggest issue was making sure it didn’t take too long and the wasn’t a distraction. The integration with Sentral meant we could continue our morning roll-call routine but also collect the wellbeing data at the same time. Some classes do it on their interactive white-board, others do the check-in on individual devices for privacy reasons. I’d say it probably takes about 8 or 9 mins per class. But the data we get would probably worth more time.

How was the solution implemented?

The staff and students needed to know we’d tested Life Skills GO before rolling it out. It had to be the right solution to make sure we got the consistency and familiarity we needed for it to work in the long-term, particulary with wellbeing and emotional language Our Principal, NAME, was involved throughout the process to make sure the wellbeing data had applications at all levels. HE/SHE was able to use the implementation guide (provided by Life Skills GO) to provide think about how it might fit into the existing WB strategy. We ran a whole staff PD sessions at the start of term to make sure everyone was comfortable with the practicalities. At this point our trial teachers werre able to share how they ran the check-ins during the trial. The fact that Life Skill GO integrates within Sentral also made this process a little easier, no new passwords required.

What would have happened if things stayed the same?

We wouldn’t have had a seamless way for our teaching teams to know how every student in their class is travelling and simultaneously use that information to craft appropriate responses that can help both the individual but also their classroom peers. I can also see on a daily basis where I can help the classes to ensure our learning support teams know who has the greatest need and also refine the delivery of our other wellbeing programs such as the Resilience Project and Friendology. Just having it all in one place makes it a real no-brainer for us. The fact that the children have responded so positively has been a bonus and really helped with the relationship development.

How are things going today?

An example so far this term has been the amount of students indicating that they are tired, which was very surprising in the beginning but we saw it as an opportunity for a teaching moment. We put tips and tricks in the newsletter for parents and community based on the importance of good sleep. We then saw a decline in tired responses but more importantly than that it got the conversation started. We are now regularly responding to students being tired and not just letting them continue their day in that state.

What about the future?

Some students just started using their journals without any prompting. This opportunity for reflection is a really valuable step in the emotional literacy and self-regulation goals we have. Our plan is to have as many students as possible start the journals and also use the private individual check-ins to manage any hesitancy in combination with the journal. We will continue to include the wellbeing data in our weekly meetings but now the automatic reports that we receive via email mean most of the work is done by the platform. We may also start to customise some of the emotional check-ins as we noticed that has just been launched. We’re only getting started.

Want to find out how Life Skills GO can help your school understand and achieve your wellbeing goals? Request a demo with our team.