Abstract
The substantial time that children and young people spend in schools makes them important sites to trial and embed prevention and early intervention programmes. However, schools are complex settings, and it can be difficult to maintain school engagement in research trials; many projects experience high levels of attrition. This commentary presents learning from two large-scale, mixed-methods mental health intervention trials in English schools. The paper explores the barriers and challenges to engaging schools in promotion or early intervention research and offers detailed recommendations for other researchers.
Highlights
Participating in such research can be advantageous to schools, often providing access to staff training and, in some cases, even improving academic performance [5]
The Education for Wellbeing (EfW) programme benefitted from being funded by the Department for Education (DfE); colleagues at DfE had a wider reach than our research unit and were able to advertise the programme on several different platforms
Member of school staff spend long hours working with pupils and their parents/carers, delivering an extensive curriculum under pressure to produce outcomes on many levels
Summary
The substantial time that pupils spend in schools makes them one of the most convenient and efficient places to obtain data from large, representative, and universal samples of young people [1–3]. With an increasing focus in recent years on schools’ role in promoting health, many research trials are taking place to determine the effectiveness of health and wellbeing interventions in schools and to explore factors affecting implementation [4]. Participating in such research can be advantageous to schools, often providing access to staff training and, in some cases, even improving academic performance [5]. Teachers in English schools already work longer hours than many of their counterparts in other developed countries, and school leaders are under substantial financial pressure [6,7].
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