Dealing with pupils who are struggling in school consumes a disproportionate amount of time that could (and can) be used more effectively.
What if there is a way to identify who these pupils are before they communicate their feelings through their disengagement and/or disruptive behaviour?
Furthermore, what if you could also identify their unmet needs with tailored interventions to prevent more challenging situations from arising?
When discussing these very challenges with a school partner we devised an interesting experiment. Could we use the Evolve Development Tracker (EDT) to accurately identify which pupils at the school are in greatest need of pastoral support?
Method 1 – the traditional way
Senior leaders at the school share a list of their 30 pupils from KS2 who are most at-risk based on observations and performance data from the first six weeks of the school year.
Method 2 – the Wellbeing Compass way
All KS2 pupils complete the short Wellbeing Compass survey within the EDT and this data is used to identify the 30 pupils who are deemed to be most at-risk.
Results
23 of the 30 pupils identified using the Wellbeing Compass (Method 2) are also pupils identified the traditional way using school staff observations and intelligence (Method 1).
The Wellbeing Compass survey is a reliable predictive tool with 77% accuracy.
Furthermore, three of the pupils on the Wellbeing Compass list were also a concern for the school but didn’t quite make it into their top 30. This meant that only four of the pupils identified using wellbeing data were a surprise to the school and not deemed to be in need of additional pastoral support.
Advantages of the Wellbeing Compass way
- It identifies at-risk children who may not be exhibiting disengagement, behavioural challenges or conduct disorder
- The results show what support interventions should focus on for each individual pupil
- Disengagement and behavioural challenges can be avoided before they are observed and require more serious interventions
We have always encouraged school clients to use the Wellbeing Compass with all pupils in a year group or key stage before referring mentees and these results reinforce this strategy. However, what first started as a routine conversation with a client has led to Evolve now offering this identification tool to schools who are not already engaged using our mentoring programmes.
You can watch the short 4 minute video demonstration here – How to identify your most vulnerable pupils.
