United Learning: A Lesson in Wellbeing Excellence

United Learning, comprising over 70 schools across the UK, supports more than 40,000 students and employs 8,000 staff. As a leading educational group, they are committed to delivering exceptional education and improving life prospects. However, they faced national challenges in teacher recruitment and retention, particularly in historically underperforming schools.

To address these challenges, United Learning partnered with Robertson Cooper to take a phased approach to wellbeing. Their goal was to create a culture of wellbeing across their schools, empowering school heads, HR leaders, and Wellbeing Champions to manage wellbeing proactively and sustainably.

Robertson Cooper collaborated closely with United Learning to design a staged wellbeing development programme, addressing challenges across multiple sites and populations:

  • Data Collection and Pilot Programme: The initiative began with eight pilot schools, focusing on consistent wellbeing awareness through activities and resources designed by Robertson Cooper. Insights from this phase informed the creation of a four-year wellbeing strategy.
  • Wellbeing Champions Network: A network of Wellbeing Champions was established, equipped with toolkits, training, and resources to promote wellbeing across the schools.
  • Strategic Expansion: As the programme advanced into its second and third years, it expanded to nearly half of United Learning’s network. The initial pilot schools continued to enhance their internal capabilities, fostering the independent management of wellbeing within the group.
  • Engagement and Support: Training, resources, and support from Robertson Cooper helped United Learning generate interest and energy around wellbeing initiatives, ensuring broad participation and enthusiasm across the schools.

United Learning has tracked key performance indicators, such as staff absenteeism and academic performance, to measure the impact of their wellbeing strategy.

Absence Reduction

  • Pilot schools saw a reduction in average sick days per person from 9.96 to 5.85 days, a decrease of 4.11 days.
  • This significantly outpaced the Group’s average decline of 1.48 days, resulting in cost savings of nearly £100,000.

Employee Engagement

  • Engagement in academies offering wellbeing programmes stands at 76%, exceeding the Group average by 2.5%.
  • Work-life balance satisfaction increased by 4%, reaching 58.33%, 2% above the Group average.
  • Perceptions of United Learning’s commitment to staff wellbeing rose from 48.5% to 56.7%, a 7% improvement.

Enhanced School Performance

  • Pilot schools demonstrated significant improvements in academic outcomes, such as one school surpassing its reading target by 6% and seeing a 7% increase in students excelling in Mathematics.
  • While multiple factors contribute to these results, it’s clear that teacher wellbeing plays a crucial role in enhancing classroom effectiveness.

Key Features

What United Learning said

Building, developing and training a Wellbeing Champions Network is playing an important part in our wellbeing approach. There’s no point in having a cohesive strategy with lots of engaging activities if no one knows about it or is engaged enough to take part. Robertson Cooper’s approach has enabled us to get out there and make some noise around wellbeing – creating the interest and energy that any wellbeing approach needs. Their training, support and resources are engaging and popular with our employees and the experience they bring has really made a difference to the success of our approach.

Mandy Coalter, Director of People

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