Using health and well-being data to support improvements in mental health in schools 

Welcome to the SHINE August 2025 Newsletter

Welcome back! Looking ahead to 2025-26

• SHINE schools - operational reminders & change to MH survey registration
• Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Survey 2026
• "Why Big Data Matters" lesson plans: deliver the lessons & provide feedback to receive £100 for HWB resources for your school.

Wider Research, resources and events 

• Events: Scottish Guidance Association: Virtual Conference 20th Sept - book now!
• Teacher wellbeing: Examining knowledge of perfectionism in teachers and trainee teachers’ study - please get involved
• Secondary schools: Girls – Get on Yer Bikes: Exciting opportunity for young girls, trans girls, and non-binary teens aged 12-18 in Glasgow Schools. Storytelling competition & event.
• Primary schools
  • Scottish Attachment Monitor study -  webinar 17th Sept 2025: registration
  • Equal Physical activity in Scottish Primary schools - register to take part

SHINE school members - looking ahead to 2025-26

SHINE mental health survey:

For individual schools wishing to use the survey in 2025-26, the link to register has changed to  https://uofg.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6kRXMrgglpXPQiy

Schools will be able to use the survey in one of 5 data collection windows. Data will only be cleaned and reports compiled at the end of each data collection window in order to manage the volume of responses efficiently. The first 2 windows in the Autumn term are below ( for all data collection windows see the website) :

• 1st window= 8th Sept to 17th Oct
• 2nd window = 20th Oct to 5th Dec

If Local Authorities are interested to use the survey across all schools in 2025-26, please get in touch with the SHINE Network manager, Dawn Haughton at shw-shine@glasgow.ac.uk as soon as possible to discuss this, as there are a limited number of slots available for large scale data collection.

SHINE School Contacts 2025-26:  

Please remember to update the SHINE Network Manager with any changes to the school contact name and email address linked to your school's SHINE membership, so that communications and invitations to events continue to be directed appropriately. To update your school's details, please complete this form: https://uofg.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0HP8xrVlYm4Zv70

The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) Study will conduct the next round of data collection starting in January 2026. The purpose of HBSC is to monitor long-term trends and provide international comparisons, thus delivering a unique source of national data to inform policy development in Scotland. The 10th consecutive Scottish HBSC survey will be conducted between January and May 2026, together with 50 other countries in Europe and North America.

Every 4 years, a nationally representative sample of Scottish Primary and Secondary schools are invited to survey one P7 class and one S2 & one S4. The resulting National report  is shared with the funder (Public Health Scotland), policymakers, participating schools, other key stakeholders and on the HBSC Scotland website . We are delighted to use it to benchmark the SHINE mental health survey data reports for schools to support understanding of a school's MHWB context in relation to the national context.

Each participating school will receive a school report providing aggregate level data, subject to meeting the minimum requirement for number of pupils, to benefit the local health and wellbeing improvement agenda.  To support the work of schools, HBSC also produces a range of research briefings/classroom resources from the survey findings, on topics such as Trends in Young People's Substance Use in Scotland , Anxiety among young people in Scotland and Young people’s experiences of bullying and cyberbullying in Scotland

The HBSC Project Manager, Judith Brown, will be contacting Local Authorities in September for permissions to invite schools to contribute to this valuable study,. Schools will then be approached from October to take part in the survey. HBSC aims to continue the excellent work of providing the evidence to facilitate targeted priority-setting and improvement planning for Scottish young people's health and wellbeing.

Please watch out for your school invitation to take part in the Autumn term!

"Why Big Data Matters"  lesson plans -  schools can deliver the lessons & provide feedback to receive £100 for HWB resources.

Ever been asked by young people" why do we have to do this survey?"

SHINE and Generation Scotland have developed a suite of lesson plans to support young people's understanding of: 

• big data and what it is used for,
• the benefits of and methods used for linking data
• how researchers keep everyone's data safe

We are delighted to be one of 5 projects to receive funding from Research Data Scotland to improve the design, and broaden the range of accessibility and relevance for young people and schools. The aim is to improve engagement with the lesson plans in order to reach a wider audience with maximum impact, ensuring that young people have a good understanding of health research methods and how they can help to amplify pupil voice at scale.

We are able to offer £100 to schools who would like to pilot this resource and provide feedback. This will be based on a "first come, first served" basis. Lesson content and resources would be made available to participating schools. To find out more, request access to the lesson plans and resources here.

Wider research, resources and events

Perfectionism is a personality trait associated with various mental health outcomes. Higher levels of perfectionism may make teachers vulnerable to the negative effects of high workloads and job stress. The findings of the study will help to determine current knowledge of perfectionism among teachers, as well as identifying effective ways of educating teachers on perfectionism, with the aim to enhance wellbeing of both staff and students.

Part 1:  complete a questionnaire and then watching a short video (10 minutes)

Part 2: complete a questionnaire one week later (10 minutes)

 If you are happy to participate, click on the link: https://uofg.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0MuAXy9saHSWuCq

 The link includes more information on the project, the questionnaire, and the video.

 Thank you for considering taking part in the study!

SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN GLASGOW

Please print out and put up the poster on noticeboards in the English/Social Sciences/Art/Media/Home Economics departments to advertise this creative opportunity to the young people in your school. You could also use it as a class activity and encourage the young people to send in their entries.

PRIMARY SCHOOLS

PRIMARY SCHOOLS

All the best,

The SHINE Team

Dawn Haughton
Schools Health and Wellbeing Improvement Research Network (SHINE) Manager

E-mail:  Dawn.Haughton@glasgow.ac.uk
Web:      www.gla.ac.uk/shine
Twitter: @ScotlandSHINE