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2015
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Options Appraisal on the future of children and young people’s health and wellbeing surveys in Scotland
- May 2015 - Options Appraisal
- August 2015 - Recommendations produced
- September 2015 - Ministerial approval for feasibility study into a new health and wellbeing data collection in schools, involving all pupils in key stages
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2016
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National Improvement Framework
- January 2016: The National Improvement Framework for Scottish Education (NIF) was launched - improving health and wellbeing for children and young people is one of its key priorities.
- June 2016: the NIF Delivery Plan committed the Scottish Government “to publish a plan for gathering information about the health and wellbeing of children in December 2016”
- January – April 2016: Move into an internal Scottish Government ‘feasibility’ phase for a health and wellbeing collection to test assumptions.
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2017
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Review of need for a new data collection
- An additional feasibility study undertaken throughout 2017 to explore options for, and strength of need for, introducing a new data collection for health and wellbeing of children and young people.
- Included members from Scottish Government, NHS Health Scotland, the Improvement Service, and selected local authorities and health board representatives.
- Concluded the original recommendations were still appropriate to provide consistent, reliable information in relation to the health and wellbeing of children and young people, nationally, locally and at school level.
- October 2017: Ministerial approval for proposal to introduce a new digital Scottish Government Health and Wellbeing (HWB) Census.
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2018
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Health and Wellbeing Questionnaire Content Group established
- As part of routine discussions in relation to the NIF, the concept of the Scottish Government enabling local authorities to undertake their own HWB Census was raised by the Scottish Government with Directors of Education (rather than introducing a centrally commissioned survey by the Scottish Government); it was agreed to explore this further.
- April 2018: Health and Wellbeing Questionnaire Content Group established, chaired by NHS Health Scotland (now known as Public Health Scotland), to develop a set of age-appropriate questionnaires to meet data need.
- July 2018: Health and Wellbeing Implementation Group established, with a remit to critique the questionnaires and discuss, share and agree all tasks required to prepare for implementation.
- Summer 2018 – Summer 2019: Engagement with professional associations. Census extended to include Secondary 5 and Secondary 6 pupils based on recommendations by Professional Associations.
- July 2018: Scottish Government procurement of SmartSurvey digital platform for data collection.
- An internal cross-Scottish Government policy group was established to ensure the needs of the Scottish Government were able to be fed into the Health and Wellbeing Questionnaire Content Group.
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2019
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Engagement with Directors of Education and Pilot survey
- January - August 2019: Further engagement with Directors of Education via NIF Director of Education updates
- March 2019: Pilot surveys carried out in three local authorities (local authorities) to:
- test the functionality of the SmartSurvey platform
- test the time taken to complete the questionnaires across all stages
- learn from pupil participation experiences to ensure that the questions being asked were robust and unambiguous, and
- test the bandwidth and offline functionality for authorities where remoteness may be an operational issue.
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2019
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Questionnaire Content agreed
- August 2019: Core questionnaires for stages P5 – S6 finalised by Health and Wellbeing Questionnaire Content Group.
- August 2019: Ethics questionnaire review panel convened (membership Scottish Government social researchers). Remit to review the questionnaires and provide recommendations for change.
- August 2019: Scottish Government Chief Researcher signs off Ethical Checklist for HWB Census.
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2019
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Ministerial approval for HWB Census Model
- August 2019: Ministerial approval given for the proposed census collection. Key features:
- 32 local authority census collections, data shared with Scottish Government for national level analysis, reporting on NPF, NIF and other policy workstreams as required, minimising the requests for data to local authorities.
- Local authorities decide for themselves to undertake their census collection.
- Local authorities decide for themselves the questions included. The core questionnaires set out core topic coverage, with Local authorities adding/removing questions to meet local need.
- September 2019: Health and Wellbeing roll-out paused to further review the Census in terms of content and scale, based on feedback from some stakeholders.
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2019
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Strategic Stakeholders Group established
- November 2019: Strategic Stakeholder Group convened to review and agree a set of options for the HWB Census in 2019/20 and beyond.
- Membership included Scottish Government Learning Directorate, Children & Families Directorate, Health & Social Care Directorate, NHS Health Scotland, Education Scotland and local authorities.
- Focus of review was on concerns raised regarding:
- some of the language used in the Census,
- coverage of some of the specific topics/themes being proposed, and
- the sensitivities on some topics/themes.
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2020
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Ministerial approval to proceed
- January 2020: Ministerial approval to proceed with the implementation of the HWB Census in 2019/20 academic year, following considerations raised by the Strategic Stakeholder Group.
- February 2020: Scottish Government web page published containing Scottish Government privacy notice, privacy notice for parents/carers, privacy notice for children and young people, Scottish Government Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA), and FAQs.
- Letters to parents/carers, instructions for class teachers, instructions for schools, pupil leaflet, class response sheet, communications toolkit shared with local authorities for use if they choose to.
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2020
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Cancellation due to Covid-19
- March 2020: 2019/20 HWB Census cancelled due to Covid-19 and subsequent school closures. No local authority had actually commenced undertaking their own local HWB Census in schools.
- June - August 2020: Engagement with local authorities on options for implementing the HWB Census in 2020/21.
- September 2020: Ministerial approval to proceed with an early adopter model for the HWB Census 2020/21, with data collection from October 2020 – April 2021.
- October 2020: HWB Census Implementation Group reconvened to support implementation of the Census.
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2021
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Implementation of HWB Census
- January 2021: HWB Census 2020/21 cancelled again due to Covid-19 and subsequent school closures. No local authority had commenced undertaking their own local HWB Census in schools.
- June 2021: Ministerial approval to proceed with implementation of HWB Census 2021/22 with data collection taking place from late October 2021 – April 2022.
- August 2021: Health and Wellbeing Census Implementation Group reconvened.
- October 2021 - June 2022: 16 local authorities undertake the HWB Census.
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2022-2024
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Data collection and analysis
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