Dear Parent/Carers

You may recall that I wrote to you last year to share some of the findings from the Beewell survey Shevington has taken part in to help us understand student mental health. Beewell is a survey of the mental health and wellbeing of students across Greater Manchester. It is organised and run by Manchester University and is endorsed by Andy Burnham (Mayor). In 2022, 134 schools took part, 34,208 students from current Years 9 and 10 completed the detailed survey. In 2023, our Year 10 students completed the final year of survey along with 17.5k other students.

I wanted to share with you some positive results from the latest Shevington survey which show that we’ve made great headway on some of the things which showed up as wellbeing concerns in the previous two surveys.

Our current Year 10 data shows key target areas changing for us in a positive direction.

Here are some of these new survey findings;

Happiness with attainment:	Shevington Students show higher than average levels of happiness with their attainment, suggesting that they feel more happy with their marks than other students.
Relationships with staff:	Shevington students show higher than average levels of school support, suggesting that they feel more supported by adults at school than other students.

 

Social media use:

Students’ daily time spent on social media is not discernibly different from the average, suggesting that they spend as much time using social media as other students.

 

Loneliness:

Students show levels of loneliness that are not discernibly different from the average, suggesting that they feel lonely as often as other students

 

We should now build on this success and continue to;

• Ensure students get enough sleep to concentrate in school
• Help students to get enough physical exercise. The recommendation is at least 1 hour of physical activity a day. Surveys show that those spending at least this time on physical activity have improved mental health. Still, nationally, only 1 in 3 girls does the desired 1 hour per day exercise.
• Continue to be mindful of the time spent on social media. In previous surveys, Shevington students spent a higher than average time on social media sites. The latest report shows that Shevington students on average spend the same amount of time on these sites as other students. This may benefit their sleep too!

As parents and educators, how can we continue to make small changes to help children to have improved life satisfaction?

Here are three small suggestions which could lead to improved wellbeing

• Aim to go to bed at least half an hour earlier on a school night. This could improve concentration the next day.
• Keep mobile phones, chrome books, anything with social media links on it out of the bedroom at night. This will remove the temptation to keep getting up and responding every time there is a new message or ‘like’ or the device lights up. This will improve sleep.
• Aim to spend some time enjoying activities together which will increase movement and fitness and at the same time be fun and improve wellbeing.

There is much more to the report, but I think if we can all be aware and work at supporting young people in these three ways, we can continue to make positive inroads into the wellbeing of our children.

Many thanks for reading

 

Tracey Harwood

Senior Mental Health Lead

Please click here to download the PDF version of the letter Beewell Results Parent Letter