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Introduction

This report analyses survey responses from Key Stage 2 children in English schools using the Wellbeing and Attitudes to Learning: Survey and Strategies. This online survey is provided by RS Assessment from Hodder Education. The report uses aggregate results from pupils in primary schools across three time periods from 2018–2022.

The survey is taken online by pupils and consists of 41 Likert scale questions that assess children across four dimensions and 12 sub-dimensions. The dimensions are positivity, motivation, self-efficacy, and resilience and persistence. Surveys were compared between a trial conducted in schools in 2018 (pre-pandemic) and surveys conducted in schools during the 2020–21 and 2021–22 academic years.

This is the first analysis of the data collected since September 2020 and focuses on the differences by year group, gender, region and disadvantage level among pupils in England. The analysis of survey responses from such a large number of children provides a valuable opportunity to understand broad differences between groups and look for early indications of trends that may assist with providing targeted support to children.

Each child’s mean score for a given dimension is allocated to one of three zones: green, amber or red. Throughout this paper the analysis identifies the percentage of children in each wellbeing zone. Children whose scores fall into the green zone are demonstrating satisfactory responses for that dimension, those whose scores are in the amber zone may have some vulnerability in that dimension, and scores in the red zone indicate that these children are most in need of action to support their academic wellbeing.

This report focuses primarily on overall trends, differences between groups of children and changes over time, looking in particular at disparities or changes greater than 5 Percentage Points. Please see Appendix (page 22) for a more detailed explanation of the methodology.

This report is the latest publication from a research project funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Our previous report, published in October 2022, reviewed the changes to attainment in grammar, punctuation and spelling (GPS), reading and maths among primary school children. This and other prior research can be found at risingstars-uk.com/nuffield. 

Key Findings

• Since the pre-pandemic period the proportion of children whose responses were satisfactory fell across all dimensions of academic wellbeing, as shown in Figure 1. 
• Year 3 saw the largest reductions in satisfactory responses across every dimension.
• Compared to the pre-pandemic period, self-efficacy has had the largest decrease in children with satisfactory responses. The majority of children now report feeling some vulnerability in self-efficacy.
• A higher percentage of girls than boys are responding that they feel motivated, positive and resilient at school.
• Since the pandemic a higher percentage of boys report that they have a strong sense of self-efficacy than girls.
• Schools in the North of England consistently have more children with satisfactory responses across all dimensions.
• The proportion of children on free school meals does not appear to make a large difference to any dimension of academic wellbeing reported by pupils at the school. 

How academic wellbeing is assessed

Wellbeing and Attitudes to Learning: Survey and Strategies by RS Assessment from Hodder Education was developed in collaboration with Coventry and Nottingham Trent Universities. Based on evidence and research into the factors that influence a child’s academic wellbeing, the survey was designed with the aim of supporting children’s wellbeing in school and thus their future academic attainment too. It was trialled on a sample of approximately 4000 children aged 7–11 in England in spring 2018.

Throughout this report references to 2018 data refer to the trial data. While trial data was deliberately collected from a nationally representative sample of schools, the live data (the 2020–21 and 2021–22 school years) could only be collected from schools who had purchased the Wellbeing and Attitudes to Learning survey. There is therefore a slight difference in the pupil composition between the children who completed the survey during the trial and children who completed surveys during the 2020–21 and 2021–22 school years. For this reason, care needs to be taken when comparing the datasets. The trial data has been included in this report as it is a large dataset that allows us to compare current trends to a more general pre-pandemic benchmark. It is displayed in lighter colours in figures. For more information, please see Appendix (page 22).

Each child’s mean score for the dimension is allocated to one of three zones which were based on the responses from the trial: green, amber or red. Where responses fall into the green zone, this indicates that the child exhibits the dimension in question. For example, children whose motivation responses fall into the green zone are demonstrating satisfactory motivation and are therefore motivated. The figures in this report show the distributions of responses between the three zones in terms of the percentage of pupils whose responses fall into each zone.

Each of the four dimensions in the survey is explored in turn in the following sections.

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