Wellbeing at School

Wellbeing@School: Safe and caring schools

This project involved the development of the Wellbeing@School website and is a contract for the Ministry of Education.  This website supports schools to engage in a whole school self-review process, as they work on further building a caring and safe school climate. The website includes a number of survey tools that can be used online or in a pencil and paper format. The key components will be:

• a suggested self-review process for schools to follow
• two tools to support self-review (e.g., a school self-review tool and a student survey)
• resources and information to support actio
• support and services for schools (such as reporting and marking services).

Through the website, school staff can carry out a self-review survey to get a sense of the social and emotional climate of the school. There is also a survey to gather students’ perspectives.  The Wellbeing@School survey tools have a particular focus on exploring how to enhance positive and caring behaviour among students and how to diminish bullying behaviour, in ways that build students’ skills, strategies and resilience.

Schools can use the website to confidentially store data and access reports of their data. Suggestions for next steps, resources, and services are also be provided. 

The website and tools are part of the Ministry of Education’s Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) action plan. The NZCER project team worked closely with the education sector during the development process. We connected with PB4L groups, and set up a reference panel which included representatives from the primary, intermediate, and secondary sector as well as policy and research communities.

The tools can be used as part of a school’s self-review cycle. The website provides schools with an evidence base from which to launch and manage positive change within their school.  The website can analyse a school’s data and provide them with a range of confidential reports of the findings. Schools can then use these reports to identify strengths and areas to improve on.

The website also has a solutions focus with information and links to resources and programmes relating to each of the areas covered in the surveys. 

This booklet is a summary of the key ideas from a literature review of New Zealand and international research about ways to create a caring and safe school climate that addresses bullying behaviours. Download is also listed in the outputs below.