“(The SHEU survey) was very, very useful. It gave us reassurance we weren’t missing a trick. For example not many pupils in the sample year groups were taking illegal drugs, which re-enforced our opinions. But the survey also raised issues and flagged some things up. We discovered that some of our girls weren’t eating enough – the percentage of girls in our school not eating lunch the day before the survey was higher than the county average. There were other concerns too, specifically around cigarettes, alcohol and attendance.
The school used this data and took a number of actions to address it. More female peer mentors were put in place and the school asked NEXUS (the Extended Schools service) for help, so they developed a programme for girls which addressed their eating patterns, healthy eating, sex education and self-esteem issues.
We ran an anti-bullying group for Year 9 as a preventative measure, based upon data provided by our current Year 10 students.
The travel data revealed that a high number of pupils took the car to school so we involved the BIKE-IT scheme who ran assemblies, brought in their bikes (including one with a pedal-powered smoothie maker!), and raised awareness of health and green issues.
The information about how happy the students were with their lives raised some concerns as far fewer girls were as happy as the boys, so work was done around developing aspirations, role-models and self-esteem."
Schools health survey: what are young people really like?
Schools health survey: what are young people really like?
In 1977, John Balding began the Schools Health Education Unit (SHEU) and started SHEU school surveys. John wanted to find ways of assessing young people's behaviours and give useful health-related behaviour profiles to education and health colleagues.
In 2012, read about recent SHEU surveys in ...
Wiltshire
Cambridgeshire
SHEU is nationally-recognised as the specialist provider of reliable local survey data for schools and colleges.
Find out about SHEU surveys