The InformED Report for March 16, 2017 looked at schools taking responsibility for students’ mental health. New Zealand educators were preparing for the country’s first positive education conference, and a BBC report from Manchester showed how much one school was doing, and how uncertain its funding had become. The edition then turned to Texas, where the State Board of Education had given preliminary approval to biology standards that kept language challenging evolution, and closed with the new Snap Foundation, which Snap Inc. said would support arts, education and youth.
In this edition
- New Zealand schools were building wellbeing into their values and curriculum, ahead of the Positive Education NZ 2017 conference in Christchurch.
- A Manchester secondary school paid for counselling, a nurse and pastoral staff from its own budget, and its head feared cuts would end that support.
- The Texas State Board of Education gave preliminary approval to biology standards that retained language challenging evolution, and posted them for public comment.
- Snap Inc. disclosed a new Snap Foundation, with the company and its co-founders each pledging up to 13 million shares over 15 to 20 years.
Schools and student wellbeing, from New Zealand to Manchester
EducationHQ’s Michelle Curran reported that New Zealand schools were treating student wellbeing as a priority in its own right. Schools were promoting it through their vision, values and strategic priorities and through the deliberate design of their curriculum, while also responding to wellbeing concerns as they arose. In March, educators, leaders and decision-makers would meet in Christchurch for Positive Education NZ 2017, the country’s first conference on combining the science of wellbeing, drawn from positive psychology, with good classroom practice.
In England, Judith Burns of BBC News described what that responsibility looked like in one school. At Whalley Range High School, a girls’ secondary of about 1,500 students in inner-city Manchester, each year group had a pastoral manager who assessed students’ mental health, and a school nurse and counsellor were available most days, all paid for from the school’s general budget. The counselling service had a waiting list. Executive head teacher Patsy Kane said the hardest cases were those beyond the school’s capacity, because local services were overwhelmed, and she did not know how much longer the school could protect counselling as budgets flattened and costs rose. The government had just announced mental health first aid training for every secondary school, and school leaders’ associations asked how the wider plans would be funded.
The two reports agreed on the starting point: teachers are often the first adults to notice that a student is struggling. What they showed school leaders was the gap between noticing and helping. A school can build wellbeing into its curriculum and train staff to spot warning signs, but the support behind that, counsellors, referral routes and specialist care, depends on budgets that schools rarely control on their own. Leaders planning wellbeing programs needed to plan the funding and the outside partnerships with the same care.
Texas biology standards and the evolution debate
In the Austin American-Statesman, Julie Chang followed the Texas State Board of Education as it pared down the state’s science standards. A committee made up mostly of school district officials had recommended trimming or removing four high school biology standards that asked students to examine phenomena evolution cannot readily explain, citing in part the time students needed to master the concepts. The board, made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, kept much of that language. In a preliminary vote on February 1, 2017, it restored a requirement that students examine scientific explanations of abrupt appearance and stasis in the fossil record, against the committee’s advice.
A further preliminary approval allowed the Texas Education Agency to post the proposed standards in the Texas Register for public comment. The language under debate had first entered the standards in 2009, and the board planned a second public hearing and final votes in April. When this edition aired, the outcome was still open. Because Texas is one of the largest buyers of instructional materials in the country, science teachers and curriculum directors well beyond the state had reason to follow the wording closely.
InformED Report spotlight: the Snap Foundation
The spotlight went to philanthropy from an unexpected source. Engadget’s Chris Velazco reported that Snap Inc., the company behind Snapchat, had disclosed in its IPO filing that it established the Snap Foundation in February 2017. After the offering, the company and each of its co-founders pledged to donate up to 13 million shares of Class A common stock to the foundation over the next 15 to 20 years, and the filing said its programs were expected to support arts, education and youth.
The filing offered few details about specific programs, timing or governance, and the value of the pledge would depend on the share price over many years. Snap’s shares began trading on March 2, 2017. For schools and education nonprofits, the pledge was a sign that one of the newest technology companies intended to put some of its value into education, and a reason to watch what the foundation chose to fund.
Further reading from that week
- U.S. News & World Report: Eating Alone: How 4 Students Began Mission to End Isolation
- NPR: For Kids, Anxiety About School Can Feel Like ‘Being Chased By A Lion’
- edCircuit: The Waiting Game: Declining Health And Understaffed Schools
Sources
- Michelle Curran, “NZ teachers taking positive steps towards student wellbeing,” EducationHQ, January 30, 2017.
- Judith Burns, “How schools promote pupils’ mental wellbeing,” BBC News, January 10, 2017.
- Julie Chang, “Texas education board approves curriculum that challenges evolution,” Austin American-Statesman, February 1, 2017.
- Julie Chang, “State panel gives early OK for curriculum that challenges evolution,” Austin American-Statesman, February 2017.
- Chris Velazco, “Snap Inc. quietly created a foundation to support arts and education,” Engadget, February 2, 2017.
About the InformED Report
The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on March 16, 2017. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.
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