What is wellbeing?

In very broad terms, wellbeing can be described as the quality of a person's life. Wellbeing needs to be considered in relation to how we feel and function across several areas, including our cognitive, emotional, social, physical and spiritual wellbeing.

Wellbeing in schools is for all students. A focus on wellbeing goes beyond just welfare needs of a few individual students and aims for all students to be healthy, happy, successful and productive individuals who are active and positive contributors to the school and society in which they live.

Wellbeing Framework for Schools

The NSW Wellbeing Framework for schools is a statement of what is valued as excellence in student wellbeing in NSW public schools. It supports schools to create a planned approach to wellbeing using evidenced-based strategies that are strengths based, preventative and focus on early intervention. This includes strengthening students’ cognitive, physical, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing domains of development. Schools will achieve this through planning and decision-making at the local level to meet the needs of their students.

Schools can engage with professional learning to build staff capacity on:

• understanding the domains of the Wellbeing Framework for Schools
• classroom and school-wide strategies to build holistic student wellbeing
• how to build-in student wellbeing improvement measures into new and existing wellbeing programs.

Assessing wellbeing and inclusion

The following four Department resources have been integrated to support schools to measure wellbeing and inclusion across the domains of teaching, learning and leading.

• School Excellence Framework V3
• NSW Wellbeing Framework for Schools
• Inclusive Education Statement for students with disability
• Inclusive Education Policy for students with disability

Schools determine wellbeing targets that align with their specific context or needs. When creating these targets, schools should align them to student wellbeing improvement measures.

There are many student wellbeing improvement measures including school based data from Positive Behaviour for Learning, the Personal and Social Capability learning continuum (ACARA), attendance data, referral data, learning and support team meeting records and the provision of individual learning and behaviour programs.

Wellbeing and learning are inextricably linked and research shows that effective, evidence-based wellbeing initiatives and strategies enhance student learning. By aligning student wellbeing improvement measures with School Excellence Framework themes and the Principles of Inclusive Practice, this document shows how wellbeing and inclusion can be evidenced across the School Excellence Framework.