Mental health support – How should schools help students who don’t want to be helped?
STEER has recently been mentioned in a Health & Wellbeing Editor’s Pick by Teachwire about how schools should be helping students who don’t want to be helped.
Jane – not her real name – was classic ‘head girl material’. She was popular, sporty and an A* student. She exuded confidence, or so we thought.
At the time, I was head of a school that was trying out a new tool called STEER Tracking in an effort to better measure, track and ultimately improve our students’ mental health and self-regulation. The results for Jane’s year group had just come in, and my SLT and I sat down one rainy lunchtime to pore over the results.
After scanning the data, we were puzzled. The tool had flagged Jane as a student whose mental health we should keep a close eye on. A few of my colleagues sat back in their chairs, seeing this as the proof they’d been seeking that this whole exercise was a waste of time. As the biggest advocate for this new tool, I momentarily squirmed before quickly moving on to the other students it had identified.
