What were we trying to do?
We wanted to find out if receiving support from staff at school could improve the wellbeing of students who have poor quality social relationships. Poor quality relationships include a lack of parent/carer support, little support from fellow students, or being bullied by their peers.  

 

We wanted to answer 2 questions during our research:

 

1. Is school staff support associated with improved wellbeing outcomes for students?
2. Does school staff support have greater benefits for students with poor quality social relationships?

 

Why was this important?
Before beginning this study, we knew that student mental health is impacted by the school environment. But we wanted to find out whether students with poor quality social relationships experienced bigger improvements in their mental health as a result of positive school staff relationships. 

 

If this is the case, it would highlight the importance of developing a supportive school staff environment, especially for students who may not have such support available elsewhere. This supportive environment could help to reduce the inequalities faced by students with otherwise poor quality social relationships.

 

How did we do it?
We used data collected as part of the #BeeWell study, which included survey results from 25,977 students in 172 schools in Greater Manchester. We estimated the association between staff support and wellbeing across 4 elements of mental health:

 

• psychological wellbeing
• optimism
• self-esteem
• life satisfaction.

 

We then did further analysis to see the effect staff support had on students based on their level of parental/carer support, peer support and exposure to bullying.

 

Findings
Findings from the study, available in the paper The association between school staff support and wellbeing for students with poor quality social relationships showed that:

 

• there was a significant association between school staff support and increases in all 4 areas of students’ wellbeing.
• for self-esteem and life satisfaction, the association with school staff support is stronger for students reporting low parent/carer support, or who are exposed to bullying.
• for psychological wellbeing and optimism, the association is smaller for students reporting low social support from peers.

 

Looked at together, the findings showed that supportive school staff members are important for the wellbeing of students with poor social relationships. This suggests that increasing school staff support could be a way of improving the wellbeing of vulnerable students. 

 

More information

 

 

Senior Programme Lead
 

Mike Spence
Michael.spence@manchester.ac.uk