The OxWell Student Survey
Understanding and improving mental health and wellbeing in young people is a complex task, but it is more pressing than ever that we rise to the challenge.
Schools in England can sign up below to take part in 2025
Schools/Colleges
By participating in the repeated OxWell Student Survey you can acquire valuable data about the wellbeing (health and happiness) and needs of your students, as well as helping provide useful information to local authorities and health providers, and contributing to ongoing essential research.
The 2025 online survey is completed directly by students onto via an online platform and they are not asked to give their name, address or date-of-birth. It has two age-appropriate versions, for students in Years 5 & 6 and Years 7 – 13 (including FE). Designed to be engaging and easy for pupils to use, the questions should take most pupils about 15 minutes to complete and can be comfortably fitted into a lesson period.
The 2025 survey will be live from 24th February 2025 until 24th March 2025.
What are the benefits of participating in the OxWell Student Survey?
By measuring student wellbeing, the OxWell survey allows schools to build an understanding of the wider school context beyond statutory academic data. The data provided by OxWell can help inform regular, reflective evaluation and assessment of the need of your students. It will also help us ensure the supports being provided is informed by up-to-date and good data.
Participating can help by allowing:
- provide a powerful vehicle for pupil voice, allowing students to share their insights and adding value to existing youth-voice mechanisms, such as youth councils
- find out what pupils are feeling direct from them using validated measures to assess their mental health, reliance and emotional wellbeing
- gain improved understanding of the wellbeing and mental health needs of your pupils (and how these needs change over time) to help with a whole school or college approach to mental health
- plan your approach to mental health and wellbeing, the curriculum, PSHE and Healthy Schools work more effectively, so you can meet the identified needs of your pupils better
- compare the results for your school/college to other areas so you can identify success and strengths but also the areas you need to focus on
- allocate resources to meet students’ needs and identify opportunities for developing and evaluating school-based mental health promotion, prevention and treatment interventions, including from Mental Health Support Teams, the Educational Psychology service and Youth Counselling
What will my school/college receive?
Once you have signed up, and returned the participation agreement, the OxWell research team will send your school/college an information and resources pack including the following (all approved by University of Oxford Research Ethics Committee):
- an information sheet for parents – this must be sent to all parents of under-16 year olds one week in advance of the survey giving them the opportunity to opt out on behalf of their child
- a PowerPoint presentation and video to show students
- a link to the survey with your school/college ID and password
- clear instructions for teachers and students about what they need to do to participate in the survey
After the survey has been administered and once the results are ready, you will receive:
- A summary report of your school’s results
- Access to your data online via a new online digital platform to be able to: see your data online; compare your results to other schools (without being able to directly identify which schools these are); and potentially identify areas where pupils most need support.
- Additional training webinars to help your school/college make the best use of its data.
Learn more about running the survey
Watch our short video about the logistics of running the 2023 OxWell survey in schools, including:
– Key dates;
– Guidance from a school that participated previously;
– Top 5 tips for delivering the survey.
If you would like a link to the Pre-survey webinar (25 Feb 2025) for schools on how to run the survey please email us directly at: oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk
How can my school/college make sure it gets the most out of participating in the OxWell survey?
For any educational setting organising a large-scale survey or questionnaire, it is important to have a procedure in place to maximise opportunities for student participation and ensure the resulting data is as meaningful as possible. Below are some simple tips and guidelines to ensure your school’s successful participation in the OxWell survey.
Delivering the survey:
- Make sure that all staff across the whole educational setting understand the purpose of the survey and what the intended outcomes will be. Do this through briefings, staff meetings and line management to ensure buy in.
- Ensure that all pupils, staff and other stakeholders know how the survey works, as clarity is paramount to ensure participation and consent is agreed. Again, this promotes buy in.
- Meet with the team of staff (often pastoral) that will be driving the survey forward to get their views and ideas. Discuss strategies and plan a structured timeline. This promotes ownership and avoids any short-sighted decisions made in isolation that could become barriers to success.
- Use assemblies, posters and email communications to promote the survey with students, explaining the purpose and value of participation. Promote the benefits of positive wellbeing and the vision of a more healthy, supportive community as a result.
- Give students very clear deadlines for completion. Clarity and communication increase participation numbers. We found giving students reasonably short completion periods (Tuesday launch to Friday deadline) supports this.
- Give a second deadline for completion for students. State it has been extended and not to miss out. This gains some additional students who may have missed the first deadline.
Using the data to bring about positive change:
- Upon completion, use the data to target the groups you wish to focus on. Don’t get overwhelmed with the magnitude of what the data presents. Streamline the data and focus on well-defined, manageable areas.
- Interrogate the data. Work with the team driving the survey forward and identify key trends, then devise strategies tailored to specific groups (gender, year, etc.) to maximise impact.
- Monitor the implemented interventions and adapt them to ensure maximum impact and support. Being able to adapt and evolve is essential if interventions are to be successful.
- Get student, staff and parental feedback. The only people who will actually know whether an intervention is making a difference to wellbeing are the people involved. Listen to them and then plan future interventions based on this information.
How can I access my school’s data?
Survey results will be sent in a report. We are also making the data avaialble on a new digital platform and will share more information on this in due course. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the data or further analysis, please contact the research team at oxwell@psych.ox.ac.uk.
FAQs
Q: Do all pupils in the school complete the survey?
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.
Q: How long does the survey stay live?
A: The 2025 survey will take place after half term, from 24th February until 24th March 2025.
Q: Can the survey be completed on a mobile phone?
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.
Q: Do we need parental permission to run the survey?
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.
Q: How can we explain the survey to parents if they ask?
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.
Q: Can I look at the survey before the pupils?
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.
Q: Do I need to test the link to the survey before I get the students to complete it?
A: Yes, we recommend making sure that they test link works and is compatible with your local servers and computers.
Q: Is the survey anonymous?
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.
Q: Do I need to let the IT Support Team in my school/college know about the survey?
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.
Q: Why is the link to the survey not working?
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
Q: What happens if there is an internet failure?
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.
Q: How long will it take for pupils to complete the survey?
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.
Q: Do pupils complete the survey at their own pace?
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.
Q: Do the pupils log in themselves?
A: Yes. Three words will be given for each school as a unique login. These will be sent to you. The only required questions are the three consenting questions and then the student year group. Please ensure that all students enter the correct year group.
Q: The user ID and/or password won’t work – what should I do?
A: Please remind pupils to check the caps lock is off. The user ID and password is the same for all pupils in your school/college.
Q: I’ve lost/forgotten our school user ID and password – can I call someone to get them?
A: Yes, please call 01865 613191
Q: Can the pupils stop and carry on at another time?
A: No, the survey needs to be completed in one session.
Q: Can the pupils leave out a question and move on to the next one?
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.
Q: How much does it cost to take part?
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.
Q: What extra help, if any, should we put in place for our pupils around the time they complete the survey, in case the questions bring support-needs to light?
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.
Q: Can non-mainstream schools do the survey?
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.