About this report
Research suggests that wellbeing correlates with learning outcomes, but understanding the direction and nature of this relationship, and how to ensure positive outcomes, is still something we are seeking to understand.
The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) investigated whether systems and schools are measuring wellbeing components that are strongly linked to learning, and how systems and schools use the data they collect to improve wellbeing and learning outcomes.
This paper presents findings from AERO’s scoping work to understand how student wellbeing is measured in Australia and highlights opportunities to improve effective data collection and use of wellbeing data in decision-making.
Overall findings
- Research shows that some components of student wellbeing (such as sense of belonging) are associated with improved learning outcomes (such as better literacy and numeracy scores), but there is limited data available about the pathways through which wellbeing components impact learning (or learning impacts wellbeing).
- In Australia, all governments, education systems and sectors are guided by nationally agreed goals for improving educational outcomes of children and young people. How these aspirational statements translate to decisions around conceptualising and measuring wellbeing can differ, and depend on systems’ and sectors’ specific definitions, requirements, objectives and contexts.
- All jurisdictions in Australia are measuring, or on the way to measuring, some form of wellbeing in schools. Some of the common measures in use by different jurisdictions across Australia include sense of belonging, peer and teacher relationships and safety.
- Student wellbeing data is an important source of information for policymakers and researchers, but may be underused by schools to inform school improvement and classroom practice.
- There is a need for evidence-based practical resources for use in classrooms and schools to improve specific wellbeing outcomes (such as sense of belonging).
This paper was included as an appendix to AERO’s Submission to the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System.
Keywords: educational data, data analysis