About the Study

Barts charity funded
2-day training – 25 staff (those who completed baseline): Senior Leadership & Heads of Years
All staff INSET day training
Total of 170 consented to take part
Developing training manual – for other schools
CPD sessions planned for 2025/26
Evaluation – observations, questionnaires, interviews

Aim: improve communication, student-staff relationships, behaviour, school culture

What we will do:

Create a manual and video training materials for how staff can use solution-focused approaches in their conversations with students, staff, and parents/carers. We will create this in collaboration with students, staff and carers.
Train 170 school staff in solution-focused approaches and provide ongoing supervision to key staff. We will assess how students and staff experience and implement solution-focused approaches by observing student-staff conversations and conducting interviews and focus groups.
Evaluate student and staff outcomes (e.g., mental wellbeing) before the training and termly during the academic year.
Refine the programme and share what we have learnt with the school. We will develop a larger project to evaluate the programme in other schools.
Share the solution-focused programme, training package, video resources, and publications.
Support for parents/carers
Personalised strategies for families
Supporting neurodiverse children
Understanding & communicating with my child
Parental stress & wellbeing
More communication home from school e.g., positive communication, progress updates
Conflict resolution e.g., siblings

Changes made following training

Student behaviour reports include scaling questions

Year Heads & parent meetings include SF questions

Changed rewards system

Line management conversations to adopt SF techniques

Variety of methods in classrooms e.g., scales

Line management conversations to adopt SF techniques

What school would like: Scripts & conversations starters for classrooms