Monday blues or Thursday lows?

Well-being Monday blues or Thursday lows? Promoting positive mental health for staff and pupils in GDST schools

Back in 2016, Mary Sansom, who manages the staff training and development programme for the GDST, heard Dr Brian Marien speak at a conference. The founder and director of Positive Group, Dr Marien is a doctor of medicine and a health psychologist. He studied cognitive and behavioural psychology at King’s College London and wrote his master’s thesis on occupational stress and ‘burnout’.

Positive Group is a specialist consultancy focusing on the science of sustainable performance through psychological resilience expertise. Their work is informed by research in psychology, neuroscience and the medical sciences. Positive Group has translated the relevant principles of psychology and human behaviour into a programme which introduces participants to relevant theory coupled with practical, versatile tools and techniques that enable individuals, teams and organisations to increase emotional literacy, manage pressure and adapt to change and uncertainty. The programme is designed to help participants to become more emotionally aware and, ultimately, more confident that they can consciously influence how they think, feel and behave. Very simple principles are rooted in an understanding of how the brain processes emotion, and communicated in an accessible format. Positive Group works with leading organisations across the world, including the NHS, the BBC, Google and Oxford University.

Sansom was so impressed with this approach that she asked Dr Marien to talk to senior leaders at the GDST. The schools were keen to access the training programme and use it with their teachers and students. Up to this point the Positive Group had only worked with adults, but they were eager to see if their tools and techniques would be applicable to primary and secondary students, as well as staff.

‘We asked schools to register their interest,’ said Sansom. ‘We expected five or maybe seven schools to opt for training, but in fact schools were so keen that it became a question of how many schools we could accommodate.’ In the event, nine GDST schools and academies piloted the programme (now called the Positive Schools Programme or PSP) last year.

The PSP works in two stages: firstly to develop teacher wellbeing, and, following that, to enable teachers to translate the programme into one suitable for their students. Starting with staff is not just a means of reaching pupils; staff wellbeing is critical and has a significant impact on them. In a recent survey conducted by the GDST, nearly 12,000 students responded to the question ‘what makes a great teacher?’ The results highlighted the importance pupils place on personal qualities such as empathy and approachability, and the significance of pupil-teacher relationships to learning. As staff learn on the PSP, stress will have a direct effect on professional and personal relationships, often without us noticing or appreciating the impact.

The key reasons for teachers’ stress are workload, deadlines and frequent changes of policy, curriculum and assessment. It is also well known that constant change and uncertainty are leading risk factors in psychological wellbeing. Emotional resilience could be an important factor in helping teachers cope with this stress. Resilient teachers perform better under pressure and they have better cognitive function – concentration, memory, decision making, innovation, curiosity and creativity. They also have a greater tolerance of uncertainty, experience better physical health and are more effective at positively influencing and motivating students.

Staff from each school undertaking the programme attend three training days, and are encouraged, once they have absorbed the knowledge and tools for themselves, to share these with their peers and pupils. They are also given the opportunity to use selected tools – including the Positive app – as an aid to reflection. This technological version of some of the Positive tools is perfectly suited to the digital generation, and also aids the important habit forming aspect of the programme.

The Positive app includes an ‘emotional barometer’ which allows pupils and teachers to monitor their own feelings. The results of the initial pilot of over 3,000 entries from students and staff provided some fascinating data, such as which days of the week had the most negative effect on each group. Whilst students recorded more negative data on Mondays, teachers submitted the highest proportion of negative entries on Thursdays. When presented with these results, the teachers agreed that Thursdays were the most stressful, as they were the most tired with three days of the week already behind them, but one still to come. These outcomes have the potential to influence how teachers structure their work and even their lesson planning, tackling the right tasks at the right time.

Teachers participating in the pilot filled out a Resilience Framework Assessment (RFA), an online questionnaire designed to measure the key individual and work environment factors that impact on resilience and performance. A year later, after attending the course and using the online platform and the app, they re-evaluated their response to stress. The findings showed that the teachers felt that they were: • Significantly more likely to find their workload manageable • Less likely to say that ‘self-criticism stopped them from doing things’ • Able to control their worrying and to sleep better. Following the successful pilot, the GDST is now investing in rolling out the Positive programme to all its schools and academies over the next three years. Chief Executive, Cheryl Giovannoni, said “Having both staff and students following the same programme is mutually reinforcing, and helps to develop a shared language to talk about emotions and mental health in school. Importantly, the approach is specifically aimed at promoting a positive mental health culture, rather than reacting to issues once they have developed.” The Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST) is one of the largest charities in the UK, providing education for girls in 23 independent schools and two academies