On 20th January 2021, Simon Murphy and Joan Roberts presented The Schools Health Research Network (SHRN): Supporting Research, Policy and Practice Around Young People’s Health and Wellbeing. The seminar was part of a programme organised by the Welsh Government’s National Strategy for Educational Research and Enquiry (NSERE). Joan, SHRN’s Director of Operations, updates us on how it went.
Simon and I were delighted to be asked to present this seminar as part of a programme organised by the Welsh Government’s National Strategy for Educational Research and Enquiry (NSERE). The aim of NSERE is to ensure that research, enquiry and evidence play a meaningful role in the development of practice in all aspects of the education system. The seminars have been developed to support capacity building and networking and are open to researchers, practitioners and policymakers.
The title of our presentation was: The Schools Health Research Network: supporting research, policy and practice around young people’s health and wellbeing. We talked about how SHRN aims to improve the health and wellbeing of young people in Wales by:
- Providing robust health and wellbeing data to schools and national/regional stakeholders;
- Generating new research evidence on how best to improve young people’s health and wellbeing in the school setting;
- Helping schools, and those who support schools, to understand health research evidence and how it can be used in schools .
We went on to explore how each of these elements support exciting developments in the Welsh educational system including the Curriculum for Wales; the Welsh Network of Healthy School Schemes; the National Approach to Professional Learning and Schools as Learning Organisations.
The presentation was well received and we were also delighted to hear from Network schools and other stakeholders about the value they place on our work. It also introduced SHRN to a new audience and as a result we are meeting with practitioners from different educational settings. This has resulted in an invitation to contribute to a Policy Insight event linked to Schools as Learning Organisations.
Please contact shrn@cardiff.ac.uk for further information.