Investigators: Tess Gregory, Mary Brushe, Alanna Sincovich, Neida Sechague-Monroy, Zara Boulton, Amy Finlay-Jones
Partners: South Australian Department for Education
Project description
While the importance of student wellbeing is increasingly being recognised by education systems across the world, the measurement of wellbeing receives far less attention than the measurement of academic achievement. To help raise the profile of student wellbeing in the education system in Australia, the Early Years Systems Evidence team (based in South Australia) have worked with the SA Department for Education, to establish an annual student wellbeing collection, to provide schools and the education system with pragmatic data to inform policies and practice.
Over the past eight years, the Wellbeing and Engagement Collection (WEC) has grown rapidly within SA. Almost 100,000 students completed the WEC in 2022, and more than 500,000 surveys have been collected from 2014-2022 providing a valuable data resource for researchers and policy makers. The WEC is now a genuine census of student wellbeing within the SA public education system, with school level participation rates of about 90% achieved in the past 5 years within the public-school sector.
In 2019, Dr Tess Gregory and Professor Sally Brinkman received funding through an NHMRC Partnership Project (2020-22) to support the education system to take a population health approach to supporting student wellbeing and mental health. This project involves analysing linked WEC data to explore: (1) the prevalence of low wellbeing in school students, and variation in wellbeing based on social and economic factors, (2) the identification of different latent profiles of wellbeing and how these vary across population groups, (3) the impact of student wellbeing on academic achievement, and (4) the identification of different longitudinal student wellbeing trajectories during the transition from primary into high school.
External collaborators: Sally Brinkman
Funders of the project
This project is funded by the NHMRC and the SA Department for Education through an NHRMC Partnerships Grant.