Wellbeing@School toolkit

Contact person(s)

The Wellbeing@School website support schools to build a caring and safe school climate that deters bullying behaviour.  For further information, please visit wellbeingatschool.org.nz

The key components of the website are: 

  • A self-review process for schools to follow 
  • School self-review (audit) tool  
  • Two student surveys, one each for primary and intermediate/secondary students
  • A Teacher survey 
  • Further resources and support information. 

The Wellbeing@School surveys guides schools to review these aspects of school life: 

  • School-wide culture and practice  
  • Teaching and learning  
  • Student culture and strategies 
  • Community partnerships 
  • Aggressive student culture.  

For more information and further breakdown of the aspects go to: https://wellbeingatschool.org.nz/information-sheet/aspects-school-life-explored-ws 

Survey tools can be used online, or paper format with a data entry requirement.  

Schools can use the website to securely store data and access current and historical reports for their school. Any data used for reporting or research is stripped of identifying attributes to ensure user and school anonymity. 

Wellbeing@School services for schools 

The Wellbeing@school website is hosted by NZCER on behalf of the Ministry of Education.  NZCER continues to host and support the website, while also acting as a safe and confidential custodian to the data. 

Wellbeing@School support 

The NZCER Wellbeing@School accredited education advisor team provides advisory support for schools and Kāhui Ako. Facilitators work with schools to create customised workshops about inquiry focus and effective use of the Wellbeing@School data. 

Workshops can be delivered via Zoom or face-to face/kanohi-ki-te-kanohi. 

For further information see our Customised workshops webpage, or email the education advisors at: education.advisor@nzcer.org.nz 

Wellbeing@School refresh and new developments 

In 2019 the NZCER conducted an extensive review of the four Wellbeing@School tools (School self-review tool, the teacher survey, and the two student surveys). The review involved a team of NZCER researchers, developers and psychometrician, and external stakeholders, including the Ministry of Education. 

The intent of the review was to refresh the existing tools and measurement scales and ensure that the items reflect contemporary ideas and language. 

The review had three aims: 

  • psychometric performance of items 
  • usability and content relevance: drawing on seven years of feedback and usage to ensure up to date language, and accessibility 
  • ensuring the Wellbeing@School tools recognise diversity, particularly regarding Māori and Pacific students and teachers. 

Once the review was complete, the Wellbeing@School survey tools were updated in December 2019. 

Development of new items in Reslience strategies and Fairness and racism 

Currently the team is developing new items around Resilience strategies and Fairness and racism.  Eight new student items and 11 new teacher items will be added as draft questions to the online W@S survey tools in November 2020. They will appear in the online SSRT, teacher survey and student surveys, and the item reports only. These items will work together with current items to indicate the areas of Resilience strategies and Fairness and racism

This work was also supported by two rapid reviews: Racism in schools [pdf] and Resilience in schools [pdf].

Wellbeing@School updates 

The Wellbeing@School toolkit was migrated to our new online platform (Assist) at the beginning of 2020. This included the migration of all historic data and reports, with several new reporting and user interface features being available.  

The NZCER Wellbeing@School service desk team provides support for school registration and customer account creation, creating and administering surveys, reporting, and technical queries. For more information or support, please call (04) 802-1440 or email the Wellbeing @ School service desk: wellbeing@nzcer.org.nz 

Research using Wellbeing@School data 

A number of research projects draw on the data from the Wellbeing@School database. 

All identifying attributes are removed to anonymise the data, which is then used to inform the research and reporting to the Ministry of Education. 

Research reports and further resources relating to the development of the Wellbeing@School toolkit can be found at https://wellbeingatschool.org.nz/other-ws-resources

Project Outputs