4 Resilience in schools

Schools are increasingly seen as major players in creating resilient young people. This was the subject of a detailed report in England, ‘Local action on health inequalities: Building children and young people’s resilience in schools’ (Public Health England, 2014), which explored the different ways that schools could contribute.

Figure 7

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An illustration of reflections/shadows of people sat at desks in a classroom formation. There is a person standing at the front of them, teaching.

Figure 7

The report considered three levels of resilience support:

Individual:

• improving achievements
• supporting transitions
• promoting healthy behaviours

Interpersonal:

• parents and carers
• teachers and other staff
• friends

School and community

• using a ‘whole school’ aproach
• the scool as a community hub.

Note that this report deliberately did not separate out young people’s mental health from their physical health but considered that resilience relates to the whole of a young person’s wellbeing.

The next activity shows you how a secondary school in Brighton has supported its pupils to develop their resilience.

Activity 8: The academic resilience approach

Timing: Allow about 15 minutes

Step 1: Watch Video 5.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 5: The academic resilience approach – integrating approaches to building resilience across a whole school community

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Transcript: Video 5: The academic resilience approach – integrating approaches to building resilience across a whole school community

CLAIRE SIMPSON

I've been Head of Year now for three years. I started with Year 7 and they're now Year 9.

We started very much with a resilience program that was almost quite explicit in Year 7, in the transition from primary to secondary. So the point now where it really is part of the vocabulary of students. We ask them, what's the R word? And they will say resilience. It's not so explicit now, but it is all part of our culture.

Tutors have been using various activities, but also in terms of the one to one mentoring, progress conversations that they have with students about how they're doing in their work, that element of resilience is always there in the background.

The students are going through so many changes. Over the three years I've known them, they're now turning into adults and young people. They're growing. And it's something we are coming back to more, funnily enough, and reminding them a little bit, sometimes, that as they change, this is where the resilience really comes in.

JIM ROBERTS

It's about a common language. And it's about a whole staff culture. And a lot of our support staff already have very positive relationships with the young people and are doing exactly the things that help support and build young person's resilience anyway. But what it did was, it confirmed to them, in their minds, what they were doing is right, and important, and offer real value.

And I think, coming out of that session, a lot of them felt very, very pleased. They were very upbeat. They felt good about themselves because they could see, actually, they were having a very positive impact on the young people they were supporting. And it add value to that person's life.

And so, a young person going into the canteen is speaking to one of the people over the counter, and they're asking about how they're doing. And there's some relationships there already, in terms of knowing them, and they feel comfortable about asking how they got on at the weekend at football. Or finding out what they're doing over the holidays.

And rather than staff feeling as though they can't have that sort of conversation with young people, actually, it gave them the green light to say, yes I can, actually. And it is important, and it is of value.

SPEAKER 1

And schools encouraged it. And the senior leadership team are saying, do it. This is what we want to see you doing. I think that's really important.

JIM ROBERTS

I mean, we have 90 support staff, if you include site staff, librarians, TAs, [INAUDIBLE] of year, a whole variety of people there who can have a significant influence on how young people feel about coming to school.

CLAIRE SIMPSON

And with the student leadership programs that we've got, we've got a complete range of students that take part. You've got your able students, who perhaps might want to do a little bit more prefect type role, or governance type role-- so student governance, student counselors.

We've got students who are house captains and want to get involved in trying to sort of coordinate different events, and sort of be team leaders. We've got peer mentors who want to work one to one with people. We've got reading mentors that go and help at primary, but also with Year 9 work with Year 7 students. And it's a complete range of different students that will do this. And there are opportunities for all to get involved.

Year 9 have just been going through the options process. It's a really big year for them, another transition point for them. And having gone through transition with them before, building in the resilience work, it's been interesting going through the options process as they move to Key Stage 4.

And the aspiration that the students have, the way that they conduct themselves in terms of reflection. One of the activities we've been asking them to do is working on learning journals. They're not marked, they're not necessarily looked at, but they're a personal journal for that student. And they were asked to sort of present elements of that journal at the options interview.

And you can really see how students have developed their resilience, their aspiration. And so many of them, through the interview process, had an idea of where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do, even if it wasn't specific. They did have aspirations to go onto further education, or which job it was, or which area of work they wanted to do.

They had some confidence about them and they could present really well. And, I think, a lot of people were really pleased and surprised, actually, at how well they'd come on since them starting in Year 7.

JIM ROBERTS

So for me, it's been about building a resilient culture and all staff embracing that and being part of a young person's life. And that doesn't matter whether it's at the top of the pyramid, with some of our students with complex, highly complex needs, and the short stay school-- what that they do there in fostering relationships. Or the rest of the school, in terms of driving achievement and supporting young people in all sorts of different ways that I know you've seen today.

CLAIRE SIMPSON

We're rapidly improving school, and we've been through lots and lots of changes over the last couple of years. Having that resilience framework in place has really sort of helped, not just support students-- I think it's actually helped support all of us to manage change. It is probably there already, but the framework kind of just identifies that.

And moving forward, I'm really looking forward to being with my year group, taking them through to GCSEs. They feel like they are much stronger now. We know there's changes in the exams, and they feel like they can cope with that a little bit better. They are a resilient bunch of teenagers, and it's great to see.

SPEAKER 1

We've heard about some of the things that the school's done around, sort of, under the umbrella of resilience, if you like. And it's all very lovely, but tell me about how it links to attainment in school.

JIM ROBERTS

So in terms of students making progress and achieving, the school's gone from 20% to 5/8 [INAUDIBLE] in English Maths to 65%. And I know this is not just about the work on the resilience, but it's definitely a factor that has played a massive part in helping create the culture and ethos within the school, where every child feels they can achieve, and every member of staff feels that every child can achieve and reach their full potential.

End transcript: Video 5: The academic resilience approach – integrating approaches to building resilience across a whole school community

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Video 5: The academic resilience approach – integrating approaches to building resilience across a whole school community

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Step 2: Now match the examples of resilience support with one of the levels mentioned in the Public Health England report: ‘individual’, ‘interpersonal’ or ‘School and community’.

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Answer

The skills of sorting activities into a category can offer a useful way of making sense of situations and applying logical thinking. It is often the case when considering human behaviour, however, that some things can overlap categories. The student leadership programme, for example, probably fits most closely with the ‘individual’ category, but you could easily argue that is it supporting interpersonal relationships. Ideally, you’d want to include it in both categories.

The school featured in the video clearly had robust systems in place to foster resilience. If you would like to see the whole video for further study, use this link [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

Even the most resilient young person can become overwhelmed by the effects of poverty and health challenges, and even the most optimistic adolescent can be deeply affected by an acrimonious parental divorce. Cooper and Rixon (2017) argue that resilience is not static, and there are positive (‘protective’) and negative (‘adverse’) factors that can enhance or undermine it. Many young people do show great resilience in the face of difficulty but this should not be used as an excuse to blame those who do not cope with stress or adversity or to believe that if only they had the ‘right’ psychological or genetic qualities they could cope as well as their resilient peers.