Scout provides information reports that can be used to identify school priorities and monitor the progress of ongoing initiatives. This could include Strategic Directions included in Strategic Improvement Plans (SIPs).

CESE research shows the importance of students having a positive sense of belonging at primary and secondary school and highlights the relationships between a student’s sense of belonging and other measures of engagement. Similarly, high expectations are found to be important throughout a child’s schooling and play a crucial role in supporting a range of positive outcomes for students.

In schools that excel (see School Excellence Framework), there is a strategic and planned approach to develop whole school wellbeing processes that support the wellbeing of all students so they can connect, succeed, thrive, and learn.

The Advocacy, Expectations, Belonging report can be found in the Tell Them From Me app. It can be used to understand the proportion of students who report experiencing high expectations for success, a positive sense of belonging and high levels of advocacy from their teachers and other adults at school over time.

It can also be used to track the proportion of students with positive outcomes and assist with evaluating programs aimed at improving classroom/school practices and their impact on student engagement and wellbeing.

Advocacy, Expectations, Belonging by School – Over time

This report provides an overview of the percentage of students who report positive outcomes on key TTFM measures for a school over time and compares the school to both SSSG and the State.

Use the report to:

Track the percentage and movement of students who report positive outcomes over time.

Key questions:

What programs, teaching, professional learning, and whole-school practices have taken place that may have influenced advocacy, expectations, and belonging? How consistently have they been implemented across the school?

• How does gender compare against the cohort?
• How does each equity group (e.g. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students) compare against the cohort?
• How have students responded compared to SSSG and State?

Scenario: Wellbeing Practices

Over the past 2 years, you have implemented several wellbeing practices in your school. You would like to know if these practices have positively impacted your students’ sense of belonging, advocacy, and expectations. A key focus of one of your Strategic Directions has been to improve wellbeing practices across your school. As part of the evaluation of your SIP, you could use data from several Scout reports (including reports from the Tell Them From Me, Enrolment and Suspension Apps) to support the evaluation of the programs/practices you have implemented.

Focus:

How well have our wellbeing practices been implemented? To what extent have they positively impacted teachers’ expectations of students, levels of student advocacy, and students' sense of belonging?

1. Open the Advocacy Expectations Belonging - by school over time report (found in the Tell Them From Me app).
2. Generate the report using the slicers, selecting all year groups.
3. The first graph shows the percentage of students reporting positive outcomes over a period of years (filter the years selected on the right-hand side of the report).
4. This report can also be used to enable reflection on programs that may have specifically been implemented with specific year groups. To generate the report, use the relevant slicers: Scholastic Year, Sex, and/or Aboriginality.
5. The second graph shows trends over time and SSSG/State comparisons in each TTFM measure.

Consider:

• What wellbeing practices are in place, and when were they introduced/removed/modified?
• Has there been a large turnover of staff?
• Are there distinct differences to SSSG/State?

Use the report to:

Gain an overview of how students reported experiences of high or low outcomes and how these key measures have changed over time.

Focus:

Relationships between Wellbeing and High Expectations

1. Open the Advocacy Expectations Belonging - Quadrants report (found in the Tell Them From Me app)
2. Generate the report using the slicers, selecting all year groups.
3. The Quadrants show the percentage of students reporting high/low outcomes compared to academic expectations.
4. 'High wellbeing and high expectations’ (top right quadrant) is the optimum quadrant. The school’s results are displayed in the green coloured box. ‘Low wellbeing and low expectations’ (bottom left quadrant) is the least optimal quadrant. The school’s results are displayed in the red coloured box. SSSG and State results can also be seen in each quadrant (SSSG bottom left and State bottom right of each quadrant). The remaining quadrants, in orange, show areas where your school is high in one outcome and low in the other. These can be used to help you target areas for improvement.
5. This report can also be used to enable reflection on programs that may have specifically been implemented with specific year groups. To generate the report, use the Scholastic Year, Sex, and Aboriginality slicers.

Consider:

• How are high expectations and academic achievements communicated to students?
• School connectedness (programs/practices) – how/when are students accepted, valued, and included in their school setting by peers and others in the school?
• What support networks exist for students – peer/internal/external?
• What impact has a particular program had on the intended year group?
• Have similar patterns of results occurred each year for the same cohort?

Triangulating the data:

What other data sources will help assist in the evaluation of wellbeing practices at our school?

• Attendance – has attendance increased/decreased during/after the wellbeing program/practice initiative?
• Suspension – is there an increase/decrease in suspension rates pre/post/during wellbeing initiatives?
• Tell Them From Me Survey

Once you have the data, you can use this information to support your evaluation of wellbeing practices implemented across your school over time.

We highly recommend using Scout data in conjunction with internal/external data sources.

Where to next?

Access all of your school’s Tell Them From Me data and reports.

Further resources and information relating to wellbeing are available:

• Wellbeing framework for schools
• School Excellence Framework