How teacher wellbeing affects your students’ outcomes
What is wellbeing?
In this blog, we are using the term ‘wellbeing’ to refer to mental wellbeing. This means how you are feeling and how equipped you feel to manage and cope with the challenges of everyday life.
Employee wellbeing refers to how staff feel at work – this is influenced by a range of factors, including:
-
Job demands and workload
-
Support from peers and managers
-
Work-life balance
-
Leadership
-
Workplace culture
-
Personal factors (e.g. experiencing a bereavement or financial issues)
As a school leader, your teachers’ mental health and wellbeing is important in its own right – and it also has a big impact on students.
How does teacher wellbeing impact student outcomes?
Teachers have the potential to massively impact their students’ lives. Better teacher wellbeing equips teachers to be the best they can be, so you can ensure they can have a strong, positive impact on students at your school.
Retention
Teacher retention has a big impact on student success. Having several different teachers for one class increases the chance of missing out or repeating certain content. As such, retaining teachers at your school gives students a more consistent experience, establishing a routine and helping them learn more effectively – which means better academic outcomes.
Supporting your teachers’ wellbeing and professional development is key to staff retention – teachers who feel their wellbeing and growth is not a priority often don’t feel valued at work, which gives them little reason to remain at a school.
Increased resilience
Teachers with stronger mental health and wellbeing are more resilient to manage the demands of their job.
This means being able to cope with challenges and better manage work-related stress, in turn helping them perform better and provide higher quality teaching. Higher quality and more effective teaching inevitably improves students’ academic performance, leading to better outcomes.
Positive relationships
Being better able to manage stress at work also gives teachers more mental capacity to support students, building stronger and more positive relationships. Positive relationships with students can improve behaviour in a class, which in itself leads to better outcomes.
Stronger wellbeing also makes teachers more able to support students facing mental health and wellbeing challenges – and better mental health is linked to improved academic performance. Similarly, more mental capacity enables teachers to provide more academic support to students, further improving outcomes.
Increased motivation
If teachers feel their wellbeing matters at work, they feel valued. Feeling valued at work increases job satisfaction and helps you build better working relationships with your teachers.
This increases teachers’ motivation at work and the desire to do a good job, which results in higher quality, more effective teaching, as well as more support for students – ultimately improving outcomes at your school.
How can school leaders promote better wellbeing?
As a school leader, you play a big role in promoting a supportive culture and prioritising wellbeing in your setting. You can support your teachers’ wellbeing in a number of ways, such as with wellbeing surveys or by implementing a staff wellbeing policy.
Support teacher wellbeing and improve outcomes with Tes
Supporting the wellbeing of your teachers is essential to ensuring they lead happier lives and can better manage challenges at work, as well as improving staff retention and outcomes for your students.
Tes Staff Management includes tools for retention as well as recruitment – with wellbeing surveys that show staff you care and help you implement a wellbeing policy, plus supporting professional development with unlimited safeguarding training and CPD courses. With a Staff Management subscription, you can show your teachers how valued they are, supporting wellbeing and in turn staff retention – so all your students can thrive at school.