Wellbeing

Looking After Yourself When Everyone Else Comes First

The HOY role is one of the most emotionally demanding in education. Here's what the data says about teacher wellbeing, what actually drains pastoral leaders, and what genuinely helps.

The numbers are worse than you think The annual Teacher Wellbeing Index makes for uncomfortable reading.

In the most recent research, 84% of school leaders reported experiencing workplace stress.

Around one in three education staff experienced a mental health issue in the past academic year.

And wellbeing scores are at their lowest since 2019, before the pandemic.

The thing that struck me most was this: school and college leaders are at the greatest risk of negative health consequences due to their work.

They report the highest levels of burnout, exhaustion and acute stress.

These aren't isolated findings.

They're consistent, year after year.

The reasons are not mysterious.

An overwhelming workload, worsening pupil behaviour, and a lack of flexible working options come up repeatedly.

57% of teachers feel that students have become more disruptive, with 63% experiencing a rise in challenging behaviour, and 82% say their mental health has suffered as a consequence.

For Heads of Year specifically, you absorb the pastoral fallout of all of this.

Every difficult student situation, every challenging parent, every safeguarding concern, every attendance crisis.

You are the person in the middle of it.

Knowing the scale of the problem doesn't fix it.

But it does tell you something important: if you're struggling, you are not the problem.

The conditions are the problem.

And you are far from alone.