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.
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
Step 1: Watch Video 5.
Transcript: Video 5: The academic resilience approach – integrating approaches to building resilience across a whole school community
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’.
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.