This case study is about a large primary school with 390 pupils, in the East of England. Although the school had been engaged in staff well-being for some time through the Healthy Schools Programme, they began the Well-Being Programme in November 2003 to give management information and feedback. The Head was concerned that there may be issues relating to the well-being of Support Staff, particularly with the implementation of workforce reform. The school has linked Well-Being work closely with Investors in People) IiP (Standard achieved January 2003) and the Healthy Schools Programme. The school is also a Tranche 1 School on the Workforce Reform Programme and has already begun to engage in the process of re-grading of Teacher Assistants.
The HSE Management Standards approach is similar to the Organisational Self-Review Measure (OSRM) developed by Worklife Support as part of the National Well-Being Programme. The Management Standards help organisations assess their performance against six key areas (or risk factors) that can be causes of work-related stress. These are: demands, control, support, relationships, role, and change. Taken as a whole the Standards capture the culture of an organisation that is tackling stress effectively. The OSRM captures all these key areas too, as well as looking at the additional area of personal issues affecting individuals.
As well as the OSRM, Worklife Support also provides: an independent and confidential service to schools, a training programme for Facilitators, assistance with completion of the OSRM, a confidential written commentary and face-to-face feedback with a Well-Being Co-ordinator. To assist with the necessary follow up work after the introduction of the OSRM, Worklife Support offers ongoing support for the Facilitator and individually tailored support to schools through contact with the Co-ordinators. The Well-Being Programme is supported by a national database of information from over 30,000 education employees enabling the development of national profiles.
The school had focussed upon Staff health and Well-being when it joined the Healthy Schools scheme in 1998. From this, there had been significant developments in the physical environment and the development of ICT resources to reduce workload. As part of an extension programme and internal reorganisation due to growth in pupil numbers, the school was able to re-designate one of the classrooms as a staffroom. This led to a much improved social and work environment for all staff. The school staff were involved in planning and developing this space.
The school staff also discussed and developed their work with parental volunteers – recognising that having many parents in school working in classrooms was an enormous benefit but not without its pressures for staff. They developed a new information leaflet for parents that helped clarify their role whilst being very useful and informative about school policies and expectations (e.g. behaviour of pupils).
From a briefing and information given to Heads and staff, the Head was aware of the potential practical support that the Well-Being Programme could give as well as providing a means of auditing issues and providing feedback around change management, communication, workload and work-life balance. The Head and staff saw the Well-Being Programme as a natural extension to the work the school had already done and a means by which to monitor the developments they were making.
The school chose to have a Facilitator who would lead a Well-Being team comprising of: a teaching assistant, a play leader supervisor and a governor. The Facilitator and teaching assistant used staff meeting time to brief the whole staff and introduce them to the online survey and all staff were given designated time to complete it in the computer suite. A Well-Being notice board was set up to publicise the initiative. Links were emphasised between other initiatives, IIP was re accredited and Workforce reform Issues introduced to staff so that they could see the relevance of what they were doing.
Following the survey, the County Well-Being coordinator came to the school and fed back the results of the survey to the Head and the Well-Being team. Feedback to the whole staff was held in two main groups: the teaching staff after school; and support staff in the afternoon. The Head teacher chose not to attend so that the staff could talk freely.
At this point the Head teacher attended the Tranche 1 training on Workforce Reform with the facilitator and the TA from the Well-Being group. It confirmed the very strong link between what they were trying to do and Workforce Reform. As a result they expanded the Well-Being team by adding the caretaker, a member of the clerical staff and a Learning Support assistant and renamed it the School Change team. This team were briefed in detail about workforce reform. Their first task was to create an action plan. The information from the Well-Being audit and the deeper understanding gained from the feedback discussions were used to form the first part of the action plan.
The report was very positive showing many strengths, but there were also issues to address: Staff involvement in change management and the decision-making process Making better use of resources Improving the physical environment
Discussion about the process of change showed that it was linked to communication issues. It was decided to introduce a new whiteboard system with designated boards for different sorts of information e.g. the minutes of working parties and agendas of meetings to keep people informed. The memo system was revised so that staff informed each other in this way whenever communication was needed.
The arrangements for providing Planning Preparation and Assessment (PPA) time to teachers, although started before the Well-Being programme, have now been further developed and embedded. The lead cover teacher (a full time employee) and two teaching assistants (TA’ s) provide cover in each unit in turn – giving both teachers in the unit time to plan together. In addition, teaching assistants cover short term staff sickness absence in the unit.
Upon deeper consideration of this issue, it emerged that the real concern was lack of role clarity and expectations among cleaning staff. This had led to a lack of continuity and consistence in standards. As a result new job descriptions were written in consultation with the caretaker who negotiated with the cleaners and the Deputy Head. The cleaners’ expectations of teachers were clarified through team meetings so that there was better consistency in how teachers left the classrooms. The cleaner’s job descriptions, alongside a list of expectations of other staff, were placed on the workforce reform notice board to create clarity of understanding and a monthly monitoring system was introduced.
The Programme has enabled deeper discussions surrounding ‘surface’ issues to uncover core concerns. For example issues with physical environment highlighted the core concern of lack of role clarity for cleaners.
Although many concerns have been dealt with, the school wishes to continue addressing further issues in the future.
For example, resources - as yet there are many questions to be discussed: Which resources are whole school resources and which belong to teams? Who is responsible for them? Where should they be kept and when should supplies be replenished or replaced? It has been decided to appoint a resources manager. Their job will be to make inventories of central resources and help organise and maintain central resource areas. This job will also be linked to extra office help for routine admin tasks.