Stronger Schools

SS-Logo-Stacked

Empowering educators

with local guidance on recognising and responding early to children’s wellbeing needs

Clear guidance for educators, with local information

Stronger Schools delivers health and wellbeing guidance for educators and other school staff working with primary-school-aged children.

It contains pathways to help school staff recognise and respond to the wellbeing needs of children and provides strengths-based, early-intervention strategies. A key focus is involving families in planning and decision-making.

Stronger Schools describes how to get support for children, families, and schools when needed from in-school and community-based services.

The content in Stronger Schools is developed with schools and local health and wellbeing professionals, drawing on their knowledge to ensure the information reflects the local system and expert opinion.

Stronger Schools is delivered by an innovative online platform that allows local information to be incorporated into nationally-consistent guidance.

Stronger Schools:
  • provides teachers and schools staff with an understanding of how to recognise children’s wellbeing needs, the confidence to know when and how to provide support, and the knowledge of when to seek help.
  • encourages early intervention to support children’s health and wellbeing.
  • facilitates better-informed decisions within the local context.
  • improves access to services to ensure children get the right support at the right time.
  • reduces unnecessary variation in practice.
  • maps local and national education, health, and social services and helps to inform future targeted investments by government agencies.
Tile 1

RECOGNISE
CHILDREN'S
WELLBEING NEEDS

Tile 2

EARLY INTERVENTION
TO SUPPORT
CHILDREN

Tile 3

MAPS LOCAL
SERVICES TO INFORM
FUTURE FUNDING

Tile 4

REDUCES
VARIATION
IN PRACTICE

Tile 5

THE RIGHT
SUPPORT, AT THE
RIGHT TIME

Tile 6

BETTER INFORMED
DECISIONS
LOCALLY

Children and their families benefit when schools are well-informed and follow consistent, locally-recommended best practice for wellbeing support.

Teachers and other school staff benefit by having clear, consistent guidance on how to support children’s health and wellbeing in their local setting.

Education and health systems benefit through improved outcomes for children’s health and wellbeing, having a way of facilitating continual improvement, and having a platform for communicating directly with schools.

Education, health, and social services benefit by receiving better-quality requests for support from schools and by sharing guidance to improve continuity of care.

What people are saying about Stronger Schools

1 - Stealing

One of our schools has a child who is stealing on a regular basis. The school staff were thrilled to find practical advice on Stronger Schools that they could use straight away. They are using it more and more, and really appreciate the regular updates.

Team leader of a wellbeing support service

2 - Other topics

Stronger Schools gives us information on the topics we need to know about. We know how to teach numeracy and literacy; it's those other things that affect kids that we need information about. 

Assistant principal

3 - Grief and loss

One of our students lost his mum in the holidays. The Grief and Loss pathway on Stronger Schools gave us what we needed; how to talk to him, what to tell the other children, and how to support his return to school. 

Principal

4 - Diabetes

I missed the diabetes session with the nurses, but found all the information I needed for my student with diabetes on Stronger Schools. Really clear and informative.

Teacher

5 - Professional development

After the professional development session [provided by the Stronger Schools programme], I thought about one of our children who has bad eczema and was very unsettled. I met with his mum and the public health nurse, and we wrote up a good plan. He is now much happier and his skin looks a lot better. 

Deputy Principal

6 - something pops up

Whenever something pops up in my classroom, Stronger Schools is always the first place I go. The advice is practical and easy to pass on and implement, and everything that has popped up in my classroom has been covered.

Teacher

7 - Muslim students

Stronger Schools is an amazing repository of information. Everything in one place makes it so useful. We found great information to help us support our Muslim students. 

Counsellor

8 - Pastoral care

The pathway developed for pastoral care meetings in schools is wonderful! For vulnerable children, pastoral care meetings are essential, as they provide wrap-around support for the child and their family. The Stronger Schools Memorandum of Understanding template is ideal and formalises the process. 

Public health nurse

9 - Self harm

There was a self-harm incident at a primary school, and staff were very unsure how to respond. I sat with the teacher and we went through the pathway on Stronger Schools. The following day, the child and parent came into school for a meeting. The teacher reported that after digesting Stronger Schools, they approached the meeting in a completely different way than they had originally planned.

Team leader of a wellbeing support service

1 - Stealing

One of our schools has a child who is stealing on a regular basis. The school staff were thrilled to find practical advice on Stronger Schools that they could use straight away. They are using it more and more, and really appreciate the regular updates.

Team leader of a wellbeing support service

2 - Other topics

Stronger Schools gives us information on the topics we need to know about. We know how to teach numeracy and literacy; it's those other things that affect kids that we need information about. 

Assistant principal

3 - Grief and loss

One of our students lost his mum in the holidays. The Grief and Loss pathway on Stronger Schools gave us what we needed; how to talk to him, what to tell the other children, and how to support his return to school. 

Principal

4 - Diabetes

I missed the diabetes session with the nurses, but found all the information I needed for my student with diabetes on Stronger Schools. Really clear and informative.

Teacher

5 - Professional development

After the professional development session [provided by the Stronger Schools programme], I thought about one of our children who has bad eczema and was very unsettled. I met with his mum and the public health nurse, and we wrote up a good plan. He is now much happier and his skin looks a lot better. 

Deputy Principal

6 - something pops up

Whenever something pops up in my classroom, Stronger Schools is always the first place I go. The advice is practical and easy to pass on and implement, and everything that has popped up in my classroom has been covered.

Teacher

7 - Muslim students

Stronger Schools is an amazing repository of information. Everything in one place makes it so useful. We found great information to help us support our Muslim students. 

Counsellor

8 - Pastoral care

The pathway developed for pastoral care meetings in schools is wonderful! For vulnerable children, pastoral care meetings are essential, as they provide wrap-around support for the child and their family. The Stronger Schools Memorandum of Understanding template is ideal and formalises the process. 

Public health nurse

9 - Self harm

There was a self-harm incident at a primary school, and staff were very unsure how to respond. I sat with the teacher and we went through the pathway on Stronger Schools. The following day, the child and parent came into school for a meeting. The teacher reported that after digesting Stronger Schools, they approached the meeting in a completely different way than they had originally planned.

Team leader of a wellbeing support service

Stronger Schools helps get national and local guidance into practice

Stronger Schools combines national guidance with locally-relevant information. It’s easy for school staff to access at the frontline, but is not publicly-available.

The core content is maintained by New Zealand-based Streamliners and delivered to regions in New Zealand and the UK through partnership agreements with government agencies responsible for health and education. It is also available for implementation in Australia, the Republic of Ireland, and Canada.

Streamliners partners with each geographical area to ensure the core pathways reflect local best practice and service information.

As an online resource, the content can be rapidly updated to deliver new and changing national and local guidance, for example in response to crisis events in the community.

Stronger Schools helps get national and local guidance into practice

Based on a survey of users of Canterbury Stronger Schools:

Say they would
recommend stronger
schools to a colleague

Say the information in
stronger schools is
high quality

say stronger schools
is practical and easy
to use

Answers to some of your questions

There is already a lot of information online. What makes Stronger Schools different?

Stronger Schools is unique due to:

  • its ability to combine consistent national guidance with local information that enables educators to make better-informed decisions.
  • the way content is developed by specialist writers, experienced educators, and local subject matter experts from the health, education, and social sectors.
  • the technology that sits behind it.

How do school staff access Stronger Schools?

Stronger Schools content is continually being updated to reflect changing local and national guidance. Local content advisors alert the Stronger Schools development team when information changes. To keep up-to-date, school staff and local service providers subscribe to regular email updates or they can check the Latest Updates page for rolling summaries of changes as they occur.  

How up-to-date is the content and how will I know when something has been added or updated?

Stronger Schools is a website, so they can access it using a web browser on a computer, tablet, or mobile phone.

It is designed to respond to screen size, giving optimal user experience no matter what device it is viewed on.

Can my school subscribe to Stronger Schools?

Stronger Schools isn’t a subscription product for individual schools. It is sponsored and delivered on a regional basis and made freely-available to schools in the area. 

For example, in Canterbury (New Zealand), Stronger Schools is part of a wellbeing in schools programme, funded by the local health board. In South Tyneside (UK), it is supported by a number of agencies as part of supporting children’s wellbeing.

If you are involved in the management or governance of a school and would like the benefit of clear and consistent wellbeing guidance that Stronger Schools brings, discuss with your local education or health agency responsible for wellbeing in schools, and ask them to contact us. 

Is Stronger Schools available to early childhood centres or high schools?

The guidance in Stronger Schools is specifically for children of primary school age. The ages that children start primary school and high (secondary) school varies between countries, but generally Stronger Schools is suitable for children aged from 5 to 13 years. 

Which are the most-used pathways?

The top 10 pathways (most viewed) are Behaviour, Anxiety, Bullying, Emotional Regulation, Settling Back in to School, Self-harm, Emotional Wellbeing, COVID-19, Dyslexia, and School Transitions (Canterbury, November 2020)

Can families of children in our school use Stronger Schools?

Access is limited to school staff and education, health, and wellbeing professionals who are working with schools to support children’s wellbeing.  

However, pathways contain locally-recommended resources and other information to share with families through the school’s usual communication channels.