A: In primary schools, only students in Years 5 and 6 are invited to participate. For secondary schools, all year groups from Year 7 to Year 13 (inclusive) can participate. All Further Education college students can take part.

A: The 2025 survey will take place after half term, from 24th February until 24th March 2025 (has now been extended to April 2025). 

A: We recommend that the survey is accessed on a desktop computer, a laptop or a tablet device. It is possible to complete the survey using a mobile phone but some questions might be harder to follow. 

A:  All parents of students under 16 years must be sent information about the survey so that they can choose for their child to not take part (opt-out). This information (usually in the form of a letter we provide but can be included in other school mail-outs) must be sent to all parents of under 16s at least a week before the survey is carried out. Please email oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk if you need further information. 

A: Here is some suggested wording if parents ask to know more about the survey: 

Children the school/ in years xxxxx [amend as necessary] are taking part in a survey being conducted on behalf of [local authority name] through the University of Oxford. The survey provides an opportunity for students to voice their opinions on different health and wellbeing themes and will be used to understand the mental health needs of our students and also help plan provision of health and wellbeing resources. Our school will get feedback on our students’ school experience and useful information for us to learn about our students and also to provide information, for example, to governors and for future Ofsted inspections. The survey is conducted to collect averages of children’s behaviour and no directly identifying information, such as names, emails or addresses, is taken. Extensive precautions are taken to ensure students cannot be identified. We look forward to sharing the information with parents/carers later in the year when the findings are available. 

A: Yes. For teachers or other staff wishing to look at the survey, there is a demo survey that can be taken and this is available from our team at oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk if you cannot find a link.    

A: Yes, we recommend making sure that they test link works and is compatible with your local servers and computers.

A: We do not want to be able to identify any students who complete the survey. They are not asked their name, date of birth, where they live, etc. When your students complete the survey, please advise them to do this alone, and ask them not to look at what other students are doing. 

A: Yes, please let your IT Support Team know about the survey, so they can make sure your firewall is not blocking the survey and please ask your IT manager to whitelist it. They will need to know the URL.

Some schools may have a safety mechanism where key words trigger a screenshot of the student’s device. There are a number of words within the survey that may trigger this. It is essential that for the purposes of the survey and the respect we have for the privacy of the students completing the survey that this is disabled for the period of time that the survey is being conducted, and please inform your students that it has been disabled. 

A: If the link is not working, and after making the usual checks for correct links etc… we have a back-up survey link available which is included in your school pack. Our team is also available and email us (oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk) or call at: 01865 618170.

If the link is still not working, it may be blocked or filtered by your school’s IT security – please ask the IT administrator to help. If they are not able to resolve the problem, please contact us at oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk  

A: Internet failure – because of the nature of the survey we do not provide individual logins for children and young people, this means if the connection to the internet fails it is not possible to return to an individual’s survey response by logging back in (the survey will have to be started again from the beginning). 

However, if a page of the survey is still displayed in the browser when a connection is re-established, the survey can likely be continued –if the delay is not too long, otherwise the survey has to be re-started again.  Please let us know if you have to re-start a batch of students so we can remove the uncompleted surveys from the database. 

A: The survey has been designed to take around 15 minutes to complete. You also need to allow time to start up and login. We have designed the survey so that a student does not need to reach the end of the survey, they can just stop once 15 minutes has passed. Additional questions have been added and these would also be helpful for students to answer but only if they would like and the allocated lesson has more time. These additional questions will likely take another 15 minutes. 

A: Yes. They can complete it at their own pace, omit answering any questions and stop at anytime. Primary school teachers have found it useful to go through the first few demographic questions as a class activity. This allows the teacher to help the students understand the survey and also reinforce the importance to answering privately.

A: Yes, please call 01865 613191  

A: No, the survey needs to be completed in one session.

A: Yes, and this is preferable to them giving an inaccurate answer. If students are in doubt, they should be reminded that their answers cannot be traced back to them; their names date of birth and address are not asked.  

A: Oxfordshire and Liverpool County Council (Department of Education) have both commissioned the survey. There is, therefore, no charge to participating for schools in these areas (including primaries, secondaries, sixth forms, & Further Education colleges).

Other areas can also take part by paying a small administration fee. Please contact oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk to find out more.

A: We recommend that you have identified one or more link teachers so that when your students/young people complete the survey they will be informed that there are trusted adults and/or counsellors ready to support and listen to students and they need to be contacted (such as Heads of Year or Pastoral Leads, Student Welfare Leads / Advisors) and external staff (i.e. Educational Psychologists / Youth Counselling Team / Mental Health Support Team).
Ideally, this would be someone in the school/college or linked to it. The support made available could be something as simple as offering after-school or lunch-time drop-ins and/or extended discussion time and signposting in class. In previous years of the survey, some students/young people have approached the staff member present in the room, while others have gone to their Form Takers or Heads of Year. This is very dependent on the student/young person, their problem and the relationships they have in school/college. But it may help to let them know that staff are aware of the survey, so they can approach the right adult for them. 

Before completing the survey, students/young people are also shown a short presentation about the questions. This includes information about sources of support. 

A: We have a tailored non-mainstream / special schools survey, which might be more appropriate for your school. Please email oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk if your school would like information about how to take part.