Broughton Junior School is a two form entry Junior School located on the outskirts of Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire. Like many schools, a core value at Broughton was to support pupils and staff with their mental health and wellbeing.
Anecdotally, the children and parents were happy with the work Broughton were doing to support wellbeing but they were finding it difficult to measure and quantify it in school. What they found even harder was knowing what was working well, and what could be improved. Lizzy Rackham, Deputy Headteacher at the school puts it like this...
"At Broughton Junior School our work is guided by the simple belief that: happier children learn better and happier teachers teach better lessons. BounceTogether provided an easy-to-use platform that ensures we are listening to the specific needs of our community and finding the best ways to support these" - Lizzy Rackham, Deputy Headteacher
They wanted BounceTogether to give all members of their community a space to share their feelings about their lives, both inside and outside school...
Broughton decided it was time to make a change and switched to the BounceTogether Platform to see if it could help monitor changes in pupil and staff wellbeing. We spoke to Wellbeing Lead and Governor Adrian Bethune about his experience at school and how using the BounceTogether Platform transformed their approach to wellbeing.
"We specifically wanted to measure changes in pupil wellbeing. We wanted to know if everything we were doing to support pupil wellbeing was working and we wanted to measure changes in their wellbeing over time. It was about giving our pupils another avenue to share their thoughts and feelings with us about their lives and also what they thought about life in our school" - Adrian Bethune, Wellbeing Lead and Governor
It was critical for Broughton that their wellbeing support extended to all members of the school community. They found that by using BounceTogether, they weren’t only able to support students, but staff too:
"We wanted to support staff wellbeing further too. We did carry out staff surveys but they didn’t give us great information to go on. They were completed on paper and the process was archaic. We hoped using Bounce would make the process of measuring wellbeing easier, more insightful and better for staff. also what they thought about life in our school" - Adrian Bethune, Wellbeing Lead and Governor
BounceTogether was set up to help teachers save time measuring and interpreting data, so that they can spend more time supporting students and staff. Broughton use surveys to check in with pupils and staff multiple times a year. They also create their own bespoke surveys to suit their specific needs and check in with different school groups when they need to.
"BounceTogether has allowed us to know how we are doing overall as a school in terms of fostering wellbeing of staff and pupils. More importantly, it has allowed us to dig a little further and understand how different groups of staff and pupils are doing" - Lizzy Rackham, Deputy Headteacher
Adrian has found the platform to be particularly useful when sharing results with governors, telling us that “I actually enjoy presenting staff and pupil wellbeing survey results at full governing body meetings because I have all the data I need at my fingertips and I can answer questions with ease"
Using BounceTogether has been a hugely valuable tool for Broughton, allowing them to identify areas where wellbeing can be improved within their school community...
Lizzy Rackham has said that this process has now moved one stage further, as ‘the clear and simplistic analysis of the data from pupil surveys has meant that we can share this with our Pupil Parliament. They then analyse this and identify key areas to raise as part of parliament agendas. This has given the children real control and valued voice within the school'
"In one of our surveys, pupils reported lower levels of ‘being listened to’ than we had hoped. It informed our decision to create a ‘Pupil Parliament’ with pupils applying and campaigning for positions within the parliament. The aim was to give a bigger platform for pupil voice and so far, the impact has been excellent" - Lizzy Rackham, Deputy Headteacher
The effects of the Pandemic and National lockdown have had a huge impact on schools throughout the UK. For Broughton...
BounceTogether has become central to their ability to check in with staff and find areas where they need to provide extra support.
Lizzy Rackham also reports that the school are now trialling a parent wellbeing questionnaire using BounceTogether as they acknowledge the impact the pandemic (and home-school learning) has had on parent wellbeing and how this impacts on their own parenting capacity.
Using BounceTogether has not only allowed Broughton to easily monitor whole school wellbeing, but also helped them in their achievement of the prestigious Gold Mental health Award through the Carnegie Centre of Excellence For Mental Health in Schools.
"At many points during the award application process we used our Bounce survey data to evidence the impact we were having in terms of developing staff and pupil wellbeing. We were delighted to be awarded a Gold Mental Health Award and Bounce played a big part in helping us achieve that" - Adrian Bethune, Wellbeing Lead and Governor
BounceTogether is an affordable, intuitive and easy to use platform for measuring and tracking wellbeing in your school. If you’re using paper surveys or one of those free survey generators, stop! We used to do that and the process of measuring wellbeing then becomes stressful for the person managing it and very costly for the school! Let Bounce take the stress out of measuring wellbeing and it will become a process that is actually enjoyable and meaningful and save a huge amount of staff time too. It will help you shape wellbeing strategies that are purposeful and impactful.
