Student Wellbeing and Engagement Survey answers for our community

The department’s Child and Student Wellbeing Strategy underpins our current and future efforts to keep children and young people safe, well and engaged in learning, across all of our learning environments and adopts the six ARACY wellbeing domains.

The Strategy commits to:

• improved child and student wellbeing in the voice of the learner, linked to improved learning outcomes
• a common understanding of the impact of wellbeing on learning and a shared purpose for improving wellbeing
• valid and reliable data to measure improvement in child and student wellbeing to inform future effort and planning
• stronger and more consistent alignment of agency effort to improve child and student wellbeing
• resource allocation and support informed by wellbeing evidence and data.

The Student Wellbeing and Engagement Survey (SWES) is an annual survey completed by students in all eligible Tasmanian government schools.

Introduced in 2018, the Survey is now embedded as an annual opportunity to understand student wellbeing across Tasmania. At a system level, this data is routinely informing new and existing initiatives, while schools are being supported to understand their data and use it to inform their priorities, with school staff accessing professional learning opportunities and resources to understand the state-wide data and share learnings.

DECYP recognises the impact of wellbeing on educational attainment and the subsequent connection to life outcomes for young Tasmanians. A strong sense of wellbeing enables students to explore, experiment and actively engage in their learning environment with confidence and optimism.

Prior to implementing the SWES, the department had limited robust, coordinated, and consistent data on learner wellbeing to inform planning and effort.

Reports and infographics are available in our annual data section for student wellbeing and school satisfaction.

We take measures to guarantee that students’ personal information and their identities remain anonymous when participating in the survey. In line with this commitment, data is not reported for groups of less than five students to protect their confidentiality.

Data, Systems and Insights (DSI) coordinates all applications to conduct research in government schools in Tasmania, how to access publicly available education data, and how to apply for access to non-publicly available data held by the department. Please refer to Research in Government Schools for further information.