The Academic Resilience Approach
There are many school resilience programmes which aim to narrow the gap between pupils who do well academically and those who don’t. A lot of them are very useful, so why have we put this information together?
• Resilience programmes can be expensive – we wanted to offer something everyone could access for free.
• We have been working on resilience for years, and have developed an approach which many schools find really helpful.
• People keep asking us to put something together specifically for schools to use – that is practical, realistic and easy to follow, and something that inspires people.
• Pupils who experience multiple disadvantages face greater challenges in school than most so we need a programme that really helps them.
Academic Resilience supports schools to step up the things they do so there is greater impact on the achievements of their most vulnerable or disadvantaged pupils.
What information will I find?
Free, accessible resources including practical tools, case studies, film clips, and downloads.
Some people in the school community are resilience ‘swots’. They are passionate about building pupils’ resilience and already know a lot about how to do it.
They may be using one of the many programmes out there that support this, and be lucky enough to be part of an all-singing and all-dancing research programme with extra resources. If so, you may have to check in with those programme co-ordinators as drawing on other sources could affect the programme’s fidelity.
Where do I start?
But if you’re not sure where to start in building pupils’ resilience, What is Academic Resilience? can provide a few simple ideas.
Where did the resource come from?
Academic Resilience – beating the odds for better results, is an approach for schools devised by Professor Angie Hart and Lisa Williams, and adopted by YoungMinds. Based on Professor Hart’s collaborative resilience work at the University of Brighton and Boingboing.
• Angie Hart is Professor of Child, Family and Community Health at the University of Brighton. Together with students, practitioners and community members, Angie has published widely on resilience based approaches to supporting children and families in schools and beyond. She co-founded Boingboing, a not for profit organisation which supports resilience based practice. Her resilience research profile is underpinned by professional and personal experience.
• Lisa Williams specialises in commissioning support and service improvement for children’s emotional and mental health systems. With a Public Sector MBA Lisa has over 20 years of experience gained in national and regional government, commissioning, public health and children’s services. Lisa develops and delivers training, consultancy and support to commissioners, schools and not-for-profit providers. As a Community Fellow for many years, Lisa has collaborated with the University of Brighton to strengthen the links between research, policy and practice in the field of children’s resilience. Her experience as a Governor within a rapidly improving secondary school inspired Lisa to develop the ‘Academic Resilience Approach’ with Professor Angie Hart, in partnership with YoungMinds.
• YoungMinds is the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. Driven by their experiences we campaign, research and influence policy and practice. They also provide expert knowledge to professionals, parents and young people through a Parents’ Helpline, online resources, training and development, outreach work and publications.
The Boingboing Resilience Framework
The Resilience Framework is a handy table that summarises ‘what works’ when supporting children and young people’s resilience according to the Resilience Research base. The Resilience Framework forms a cornerstone of our research and practice. On this page we have pulled together lots of useful links so you can find out all about the Resilience Framework.
Ready, Set, Resilience
Ready, Set, Resilience is a workbook and supporting guidance created to support young people’s resilience aimed at year 9 students. It uses mixture of activities which support individual resilience (beating the odds) and activities to support changing the odds like activism.
The Academic Resilience Approach
Our resources help any school establish systems to build ‘resilience approaches’ that support disadvantaged pupils over time through a whole school approach. Benefitting all pupils and increasing academic resilience, the ARA helps everyone in the school community play a part.
Academic Resilience resources directory
Here you can download the Academic Resilience Approach resources to help any school establish systems to build ‘resilience approaches’ that support disadvantaged pupils over time through a whole school approach. All the Academic Resilience Approach resources are free to download.
Interactive Resilience Framework
The Interactive Resilience Framework was developed especially for schools with children and young people in mind and has more detail about each idea, including relevant research evidence, suggestions of what to do, and what you people themselves think.
Building child and family resilience – Boingboing’s resilience approach in action
This briefing seeks to build practice approaches to building resilience in the context of the social deprivation that is the experience of many of the most disadvantaged families.
Fostering academic resilience a brief review of the evidence base
It is very clear that poor school outcomes can have catastrophic long-term consequences, and there is growing recognition that schools should address ALL pupils’ needs. This brief review of the evidence explores what is meant by the term resilience and gives an overview of what schools can do to foster it in their pupils.
Evaluating resilience-based programs for schools using a systematic consultative review
The aim of this paper is to explain how and why school-based resilience approaches for young people aged 12-18 do (or do not) work in particular contexts, holding in mind the parents and practitioners who engage with young people on a daily basis, and whom we consulted in the empirical element of our work, as our audience.
Schools mental health guide
Supporting children and young people in their mental health: A guide for East Sussex schools. A resilience-based, whole school approach to promoting positive mental health and addressing individual needs.
Supporting mental health and emotional wellbeing at school
A short guide to how you can best support mental health and emotional wellbeing at school – Tips for teachers and staff in schools as recommended by young people.
How do I improve results through an Academic Resilience Approach?
A lot of schools struggle with how they can improve the results – or close the gap – for the more challenged, disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils in the school. This is much harder and requires much more attention to detail across the whole school.
Audit the whole school
A systematic approach to understanding your school and identifying where and what you might do to better promote resilience can help the whole school community to look through a ‘resilience lens’ in order to close the gap for disadvantaged pupils or those facing additional challenges.
