Research School Network: Pupil Insights: understand your pupils, strengthen your culture Phil Stock discusses the challenges of identifying pupils’ non-academic needs and how our new service can help support leaders.

When it comes to understanding the academic needs of our pupils, we’re generally pretty clear about how to do that. We have a range of assessments that help us identify who is thriving and who might need support.

In most schools, we know how to use standardised assessments and interpret norm-referenced data to make decisions about teaching and intervention.

The same cannot be said so easily for the non-academic needs of our pupils.

The problem: seeing symptoms, not causes

Across the system, leaders are increasingly trying to respond to complex, human challenges – around belonging, self-esteem, connectedness and wellbeing, for instance – but without the kind of tools and data we rely on for checking pupil understanding and learning.

Instead, we tend to reach for proxies: attendance data, behaviour points, suspension rates or, worse, anecdotal evidence, often rooted in assumption and bias. These can hint at problems, but they rarely help us understand the underlying cause.

A fall in attendance might reflect anxiety, a lack of belonging, weak relationships, or wider stressors outside school. Without a way to capture those experiences directly and reliably, leaders are left to interpret the symptoms rather than address the cause.

Many schools design their own wellbeing or pupil-voice surveys, which can be a useful starting point. But these are often difficult to benchmark, inconsistent across year groups, and too broad to guide practical next steps. They tell us how pupils feel, but not why, or whether what we see is typical, significant, or part of a wider pattern.

Moving from assumption to insight

Pupil Insights is a new service launched by Greenshaw Research School providing pupil surveys to schools and trusts. It was developed to help schools go beyond assumption: to provide a research-based framework for better understanding how pupils experience school.

It uses a suite of pre-validated psychological scales, drawn from established research, to measure key domains such as belonging, connectedness, self-esteem, attachment, and wellbeing. These are not in-house items or random questions but instruments with proven reliability and validity.

The results are then interpreted in context, drawing on the emerging patterns from participating schools. Most schools fall within an average range; the aim is not necessarily to ​‘score high’, but rather to understand variation and identify where attention might be most valuable:

• Are particular groups of pupils reporting lower belonging or higher anxiety?
• Are some year groups struggling more with self-esteem or connectedness?
• To what extent might one domain predict another; for instance, lower belonging alongside weaker self-esteem?

In a follow-up post, we’ll look in more depth at why using pre-validated scales matters – how they’re developed, how they differ from in-house surveys, and why they offer a more reliable way to understand pupils’ lived experiences.

From results to reflection

The purpose of Pupil Insights is not to measure performance, but to guide professional inquiry. Each report identifies possible areas of focus and indicates sensible next steps to deepen understanding rather than a verdict.

Findings might suggest, for instance, that pupils generally feel safe and supported but that certain groups experience lower connection to adults in school. Or that self-esteem is healthy overall, but belonging is weaker in one year group.

Crucially, this isn’t about labelling pupils or obsessing about any one item or overall score. It’s about identifying possible areas of focus that help leaders make evidence-informed choices. For example:

• Are particular groups reporting lower belonging (for example, a year group, boys/​girls, SEND or disadvantaged pupils)?
• Do we see higher anxiety alongside lower connectedness for a subset of pupils?
• What might these patterns tell us about our culture, our relationships, or the wider pupil experience?

These insights help leaders plan where to look more closely. The next steps may include:

• Running focus groups to understand why pupils responded in particular ways;
• Exploring whether curriculum, routines, or relationships are shaping those feelings;
• Combining different scales in future cycles to test specific hypotheses, such as the link between attachment and attendance.

Nuance and interpretation

Because most schools will fall close to national norms, interpretation is nuanced and contextual. Small differences can still be meaningful if they cluster within certain groups or align with what leaders already observe qualitatively.

A single low score doesn’t demand immediate intervention; it invites curiosity and reflection. The goal is for these reports to help cultivate disciplined habits of inquiry, where leaders triangulate pupil voice with their in school datasets and what they see and hear daily in classrooms and corridors.

Tracking change over time

These measures also allow schools to see whether their actions are making a difference. By repeating a survey after a defined period, schools can explore whether pupils’ experiences are shifting in response to changes in policy, curriculum, or pastoral practice.

Over time, this builds a picture not just of outcomes, but of culture in motion – how the lived experience of pupils evolves as schools work to strengthen inclusion and belonging.

Understanding before acting

In an era when attendance and inclusion rightly dominate national priorities, schools need ways to understand the human factors behind the data. The challenge is not a lack of care or commitment; it is the absence of reliable, nuanced information about how pupils experience school life.

Understanding those experiences before acting on them may be the next great step in making our schools truly inclusive places to learn.