Interviews with UK School Staff during the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020

19 interview transcripts (verbatim) from UK education staff in various regions, settings and roles (leadership, teachers and teaching assistants) including those working from home or in school during the early lockdown period. The interview schedule aimed to address the following research questions: 1) What changes have school staff experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in their own lives, in the school climate or their professional role? 2) What has the impact of these changes been on school staff mental health and wellbeing? 3) What factors do school staff perceive to have sustained or improved wellbeing during the pandemic? Therefore data consists of participant responses to these questions.

Original Project details (please read on for Covid-19 related adjustments): The integration of health and education policy and practice, with a specific focus on the role of schools in mental health education and preventative intervention, is of major topical concern. There is strong support in the existing literature on the importance of taking a whole systems approach to supporting young peoples' mental health through schools. However, there is a need to further understand the complexity of this process, including the potential impact on school climate, as well as staff and pupil outcomes. In 2015, I began my PhD research study in order to investigate this research gap, focusing on an example of whole-system (WS) mental health intervention across a county in the North of England. The initiative was commissioned by Public Health England and developed in partnership between local authority services and schools. Eighteen schools participated in the resulting locally facilitated WS implementation, which was based on the Academic Resilience Approach (ARA, Hart; Williams, 2018), developed by Professor Angie Hart and other colleagues at the UoB and partner organisations. The ARA aims to improve outcomes for the most vulnerable pupils by building resilience across the school community, taking a whole systems perspective. A fully integrated and embedded mixed method design was utilised. This enabled me to research the experiences of multi-professional staff from schools and local authority services, exploring the perceived impact of the intervention at multiple system levels and considering the potential sustainability of this project in the future. Results of the study showed that there was a significant improvement in staff perceptions of school climate as a result of school engagement in the ARA. In addition, both school and local authority staff reported improved communication, a greater sense of shared values, and increased participative decision making. Existing research suggests that these changes establish the foundation to improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged pupils, although further research is required in order to understand the mechanisms that result in impact for YP. This fellowship provides the opportunity to maximise the impact of these important PhD findings, through disseminating the results of the study with key stakeholders in four local areas in the UK that are engaging in WS approaches to health promotion in schools. These findings will be beneficial to both practitioners (e.g. school staff) and policy makers (e.g. Local Authorities) because they will help to understand the potential school wide outcomes and optimal conditions associated with WS approaches. My results also help staff in local areas to identify 'school readiness' to engage in this type of approach and help to prepare and support school staff, making it more likely the approach will have a positive impact for pupils. Building on established networks in these four local areas, learning can be shared between different regions. During the fellowship, further research will also be carried out in order to explore pupil experiences of WS approaches, extending the findings from my PhD. Learning from my PhD will be distributed via multiple and diverse platforms including on online blogs, at national conferences, and through paper publications in internationally recognised journals. This fellowship is also ideally suited to develop my own research skills and networks, and to enable me to contribute to the urgent priority of developing dynamic and collaborative approaches to multi-sector promotion of public health and other social policy priorities. Covid-19 Impact and changes: Due to Covid-19 the original research proposed for this grant (workshops with young people in schools to explore whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing) was not possible. Therefore a new application for ethics was made for a new research project which explored school staff mental health and wellbeing during the first national lockdown and partial school closure, and this research, having gained ethical approval, was carried out online in June 2020 towards the end of the grant period. Data in this collection relates to that original research and not the other activities listed in the original project proposal. To obtain a free account please register with the UKDA.