Teacher wellbeing
Understand how teacher wellbeing affects your students and learn practical strategies for supporting teachers at your school. Here you’ll find resources to help you measure teacher wellbeing, news from Tes Magazine and information on how we can help you support your staff.
Staff wellbeing in schools
Wellbeing means how ‘well’ we feel and how equipped we are to cope with and manage the challenges of everyday life.
Strong wellbeing makes us more able to manage the requirements and changing demands of our jobs, which reduces work-related stress for teachers and staff in schools.
As a school leader, your staff’s wellbeing is affected by:
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Their workload and work-life balance
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The support they receive
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Your school culture and leadership behaviour
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External factors (things happening outside of work)
How teacher wellbeing affects your students
Staff wellbeing in school is essential in supporting better mental health. However, a teacher’s mental health and wellbeing impacts more than just that teacher – your students and whole-school culture are impacted by the wellbeing of your teachers, too.
Happier staff members create a more positive and supportive culture, with more resilient teachers being better able to support each other through challenges and stressful times at work.
Similarly, teachers who are more resilient and less stressed have more capacity to support students – both academically and with their own wellbeing challenges – improving educational outcomes at your school.
More on wellbeing at school
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How can school leaders support teachers’ mental health and wellbeing?
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How teacher wellbeing affects your students’ outcomes
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Teacher wellbeing survey questions - the top 60 questions to ask your teachers
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How teacher retention at your school affects students
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What the new Ofsted framework means for wellbeing
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Using data to create a culture of wellbeing
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Teacher wellbeing stories: James Birchenough
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Support your staff’s wellbeing
Carrying out wellbeing surveys shows your teachers you care. A staff management subscription enables you to give your staff a voice with anonymous wellbeing surveys.
With pre-written questions developed by a psychologist covering 21 categories, plus the option to customise your own, you can support staff wellbeing at school and learn where staff need more support.
Get the latest on wellbeing in Tes Magazine
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Almost half of school leaders needed mental health support last year
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Are perimenopausal teachers getting enough support in schools?
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The real reason teachers are leaving? Systemic failure
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Teacher wellbeing isn’t just about workload - it’s about purpose
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Almost 40% of mat leave returners leave teaching within 4 years
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Why staying calm is a leadership superpower
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Ofsted’s new inspections cause ‘greater stress’, warn heads
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How we can help
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Staff Management
Recruit, train and retain your staff with a holistic approach to staff management and a focus on wellbeing.
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Tes Timetable
Tes Timetable gives you the flexibility to improve your curriculum and save time with advanced algorithms, so you can focus on teacher wellbeing and educational outcomes.
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Tes Magazine
Give staff access to the latest education features, insight and analysis – anytime, anywhere.
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FAQs
Wellbeing is more than just not being actively unwell – it's about how happy we feel and how able we are to cope with everyday stress and challenges.
The Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies describes teacher wellbeing as “how teachers feel and function in their professional roles, influenced by their emotions, attitudes, and perceptions of their work”.
Teacher mental health and wellbeing is impacted by in-school factors, such as workload, behaviour and the support they receive, as well as things outside of school such as financial problems or issues in their family.
As well as improving teachers’ mental health, better wellbeing amongst teachers is also linked to improved outcomes for students.
Opening a conversation and ensuring staff have a voice is key in promoting a culture of wellbeing. For teachers and school staff to feel their wellbeing matters, they should be given opportunities to voice their opinions. However, staff won’t always feel comfortable sharing openly, so it’s important there are ways to share anonymously, such as with anonymous surveys.
Staff wellbeing surveys help leaders understand where they are excelling and where they need to provide more support. Data from surveys can highlight areas of focus for a wellbeing policy – and repeating surveys enables you to measure progress and improvements over time.