Safe and Well School Survey 2013
Guidance for Primary, Secondary and Special Schools
This guidance contains information to help schools deliver the Safe and Well School Survey smoothly and effectively. Please read through it carefully. There are separate briefings to disseminate to Primary and Secondary school staff delivering the survey.
Contents:
Page 2 Introduction
Page 3 Step by Step Guide to Co-ordinating the Safe and Well School Survey
Page 6 Anti-Bullying Week
Appendix 1 Example letter / newsletter for parents and carers
Appendix 2 Key Stage 4 support services handout
*Please see the additional briefing sheets for primary and secondary schools which should be amended and disseminated to all teachers delivering the SAWSS survey.
Support for Schools
General i.e. whole School anti-bullying work, PSHE Curriculum and SEAL
Partnership Adviser; Health and Wellbeing – 01273 293533
Survey issues i.e. closing the survey / or test data inputted onto survey
Public Health Intelligence Team - 01273 290457 / 293447
Technical: i.e. uploaded survey onto school intranet
Schools ICT Helpdesk – 01273 293663
Introduction
The Safe and Well School Survey is an online questionnaire designed to gather information from children and young people about their health and wellbeing. SAWSS includes questions on experiences of bullying and pupil’s perceptions of how safe they are from bullying at school. The results can be used by schools to validate, inform and develop school’s work around health and wellbeing, especially the PSHE and Citizenship curriculum and health and wellbeing improvements.
The commitment of schools to this survey enables the local authority and its partners to get a thorough overview of the situation across the city and informs the commissioning and evaluation of services and support for schools and children, young people and their families.
There are three versions of the Safe and Well School Survey
· Primary (years 4-6)
· Key Stage 3 (years 7-9)
· Key Stage 4 (years 10-11)
Children and young people simply work through the online survey and, when finished, click to send their answers to a secure database. The 2013 survey will be open for classes from Monday 18th November 2013 (the start of Anti-Bullying Week) until Friday 20th December 2013.
The data from each school will be converted into a school profile by the Public Health Intelligence Team and collated with data from all participating schools to produce city-wide reports. The relevant city-wide report/s will be returned to each Headteacher alongside their individual school’s report/s by the end of February 2014.
Schools can also choose to deliver paper based surveys for KS1 and SEN children and young people available on Brighton & Hove City Council’s virtual learning environment, at www.pier2peer.org.uk.
Learning > Healthy Schools > Emotional Health and Wellbeing > Anti-Bullying
Step by Step Guide to Co-ordinating the Safe and Well School Survey in School
When schools register for the Safe and Well School Survey (SAWSS) they give a named contact and school email address. Each school’s registered contact and the school office will be emailed this guidance along with a unique link to their individual survey and a link to a demonstration version of the survey which can be used to familiarise colleagues, children and young people with the SAWSS.
What Next?
· Communicate with the whole school community about the survey
It is important that the whole school community, including parents and carers are aware of the survey. Parent or carer permission is not required for this survey as it is anonymous and confidential as schools do not have access to the raw data set, however parents and carers should be informed of the survey. See Appendix 1 for some suggested text to go in a newsletter or on the website. The Partnership Adviser: Health and Wellbeing can provide support on organising a parents’ meeting on anti-bullying.
· Making this experience ‘safe’ for children and young people is part of the school’s broader responsibility to safeguard and promote children’s welfare.
In completing the survey, children and young people may be identifying that they are being bullied, or engaging in unhealthy or risky behaviour. As this is an anonymous survey, they cannot access direct individual support from completing the questionnaire and pupils and students participating should be reminded of this and where they can go to access help and support following the survey. Staff should be aware of their roles and responsibilities with regard to ‘safeguarding’ in this instance and should be on the look out for pupils or students appearing upset and work within school policies and procedures to respond. School staff running the survey should provide children and young people with a right to pass if they do not want to participate. It is vital that all school staff are aware that this survey is taking place and that they should be particularly vigilant and available during this period. You should aim to access the usual channels of whole-school and staff communication (staff briefings, posters, memos, staff meetings) in the weeks leading up to the survey; supervisors, school counsellors and office staff should also be made aware that this process will be going on and that they should be alert to any issues raised. It is recommended that students in Key Stage 4 and maybe in Key Stage 3 receive the handout provided in the secondary school briefing that lists support services.
· You will need to make arrangements for pupils to access the survey online.
For example, by arranging for your school’s survey link/s to be a bookmark on your school’s intranet. Speak to your ICT Manager / ICT Staff Member and ask them about setting up the survey homepage for you prior to classes. Schools ICT Support has been briefed about the SAWSS and their ICT technicians should be aware of the survey. If your school systems are unable to support this system please contact Schools ICT Support.
· You are advised to familiarise yourself and pupils or students with the survey.
A demonstration version of the survey is available for schools to use. This will remain live throughout the whole period of the survey, and is a useful tool to familiarise colleagues, children and young people with the SAWSS questions and layout without affecting your school’s survey results. Please be careful not to confuse your school’s survey and the demonstration surveys. The demonstration surveys are brightly coloured and the school’s survey is grey.
· It is recommended that the demonstration survey is used as a teaching and learning tool prior to pupils and students doing the survey.
For example, exploring definitions of bullying, developing an understanding of ethnicity and ethnicity categories. Useful prompt text is included in the survey and further information is contained in this guidance.
· The survey will be open to gather data from 9.30am on Monday 18th of November and will close at 5pm on Friday 20th December 2012. The survey is undertaken by whole-class groups in a computer or ICT suite during one regular lesson (usually Personal, Social, Heath and Economic Education). The system can handle many hundreds or thousands of entries at any one time.
· Obtaining a good sample is key to the accuracy of the survey results.
The survey is available for Years 4 to 11. Primary schools should aim to survey all Year 4-6 pupils to ensure a robust sample and secondary schools should aim for at least a 30% sample in all year groups. All pupils and students will need to know their postcodes but not completing the postcode will not prevent them from completing the survey. Whole-class samples are strongly recommended and samples should be from across all year groups. Sampling in this way means that the broadest cross-section of your school population can be covered. If there are any children and young people who are absent, excluded, or engaged in other activities during the survey period you could consider asking them to complete their entries at another time. Similarly consider carefully how to engage and support children and young people with learning difficulties, language or other special needs in the survey. In some circumstances it may be appropriate to have a member of staff working with an individual or small group of children and young people, but think carefully about how confidentiality is maintained.
· Support for staff delivering the survey.
The demonstration version of the survey can be used by school staff to familiarise themselves with the survey. There are separate primary and secondary school briefing documents which can be adapted to meet the needs of individual schools and disseminated to staff delivering the survey. Senior staff will want to make explicit the need to read and act on these briefing documents.
· When your school has completed the survey please email us giving the date the survey was completed. The email address is This will then ensure that any data added after you have finished surveying your students will not be counted in the survey results. If you have put the link onto your school’s intranet then please also remove it at this time.
· Your school’s survey results will be sent to the Headteacher in February 2014.
Individual school’s survey results will be sent to Headteachers alongside the appropriate city-wide report (primary or secondary). We encourage schools to actively share, discuss and carry forward actions based on the survey results within the school community. You should consider sharing your data with:
· Senior Management / Leadership Team including the Governing Body
· The whole-school staff
· Children and young people, perhaps through the school council
· Parents and carers
In order for this process to have a positive impact on your school you will need to demonstrate that there are responses that follow the survey. When the survey profiles are returned, advisory support will be available in relation to analysis, action planning and commissioning. The cumulative, anonymous data will form a baseline and will enable your school to measure against a broader whole-city context. Schools can also compare the SAWSS data with their school records of bullying and prejudiced based incidents.
Individual school’s data will not be shared without the school’s consent. The data is anonymous, confidential and securely stored. Access to individual school data at local authority level is restricted. Primary schools who request it may be able to receive demographic data on a few key questions, where numbers are large enough to ensure anonymity. . If there are any issues raised for which you feel you need support please contact Sam Beal, Partnership Adviser: Health and Wellbeing on 01273 293533.
Anti-Bullying Week
The survey is open during and after national Anti-Bullying Week. Entries can be made at any time between Monday 18th November and Friday 20th December 2013. Many schools have historically used Anti-Bullying Week as an opportunity to focus on these issues and then commenced the SAWSS the following week. This practice is still recommended for the SAWSS.
This year Anti-Bullying Week is November 18th – 22nd.
Further information is available from the Anti-Bullying Alliance at http://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk. It is likely that bullying will have an increased profile during Anti-Bullying Week and we would expect that bullying will be an issue that schools, parents, carers, children and young people will be discussing during this time.
Information on activities and resources to support Anti-Bullying Week are available on Brighton & Hove City Council’s virtual learning environment, at www.pier2peer.org.uk.
Learning > Healthy Schools > Emotional Health and Wellbeing / Anti-Bullying
The Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) resources have materials for all primary year groups in the Say No to Bullying theme and there are also secondary materials appropriate for Key Stage 3. These are available from Pier2Peer site below:
http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupRenderCustomPage.asp?GroupID=891984ResourceID=2758155
You may want to re-introduce pupils to the definition of bullying from your school’s Anti-Bullying Policy and discuss that with them, and support them to review and develop the definition and policy into child friendly language. The Department for Education in the Preventing and tackling bulling; Advice for school leaders, staff and governing bodies (2011) define bullying as:
“Behaviour by an individual or a group, usually repeated over time, that intentionally hurts another individual or group either physically or emotionally”.
Further definitions, including on the different types and forms of bullying can be found in the Bullying and prejudice-based incident recording and reporting guidance for Brighton & Hove Schools, 2012.
This can be found on Pier2Peer and also supports schools in the effective recording of bullying and prejudice based incidents:
http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupDownloadFile.asp?GroupId=891984&ResourceId=4732835
Appendix 1
Suggested communication to parents, carers and other stakeholders
Please amend to reflect practice in your school / school definition of bullying etc.
Anti-bullying week this year is 18th November – 22nd November 2013 and the theme for our school is “The Future is Ours, Safe, Fun and Connected” {substitute school theme if different}. We will be learning about the impact of bullying and in particular ensuring that pupils / students understand our school definition of bullying;
“Bullying is behaviour by an individual or group, repeated over time, that intentionally hurts another individual or group either physically or emotionally. Bullying can take many forms (for instance, cyber-bullying via social media or the internet). It can involve verbal taunts, name calling, physical injury, and damage to property, rumour spreading, shunning or ridicule and is often motivated by prejudice against particular groups, for example on grounds of ethnicity, religion, belief, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation or disability, or because a child is in care, has caring responsibilities or mental health issues. It might be motivated by actual differences, perceived differences or as a result of association with someone else.”
This term, pupils / students in Years 4-6 / 7-11 will participate in the Safe & Well School Survey. This is an online, anonymous, annual City Wide survey for children and young people aged between 7 and 16. The survey asks a range of questions about school, health and wellbeing and about experiences of bullying. It is explained to all children and young people that this is a confidential survey and they cannot be identified by the information that is collected. They are also asked to speak to a member of school staff or other trusted adult if participating in the survey makes them feel worried or concerned. This survey does not require parental permission to participate, but all children and young people have the right not to participate. We run this survey to help our school further improve Healthy Schools activities, PSHE lessons and our whole school approach to anti-bullying and equality. Furthermore, data from all schools is collated to provide city-wide information about bullying and health and wellbeing and this is used to improve services and support for children and young people.