Written by Cheri Ashby, Deputy CEO at Activate Learning
Whenever we think about the pandemic, it’s easy to feel that it’s now fading into the past and will hopefully soon be forgotten.
However, the impact the pandemic had on our young people is still very much being felt and the resulting mental health crisis we are seeing across the education sector is one that requires an urgent response on all our parts.
The reality is that far too many of our young people are having to deal with a range of mental health issues relatively unsupported. From low level emotional anxiety and stress through to eating disorders, self-harming and suicidal thoughts.
I know from my own experiences across Activate Learning’s group of colleges that we have seen far greater numbers of students than ever before presenting with mental health issues.
Unless they receive proper support, there could be long-lasting negative consequences for them, impeding their educational progress and jeopardising their future employability and the quality of their personal relationships.
For those young people who were in the lower year groups at school during the Covid lockdowns, the impact of this time has been the greatest – and the most worrying – on their development. Those children who were younger when the global pandemic struck had not yet developed the essential literacy, social and resilience skills necessary to thrive in education and society.
It is the combined impact of this pandemic legacy, the cost-of-living crisis and 24/7 social media that are now having a detrimental impact on the mental health and wellbeing of so many of our students. This is one of the key reasons why a significant minority of students disengage and stop attending college, dropping out of their study programmes and failing to achieve any qualifications.
At Activate Learning we have a Learning Philosophy at the heart of our organisation that shapes both our culture and the way we deliver learning.
Our philosophy recognises the importance of the dynamic between an individual’s brain, motivation and emotion and the extent to which this affects their capacity to learn and practise new skills.
We believe the starting point for effective learning is in supporting the individual to feel emotionally ready to learn. When you feel physically and psychologically safe and secure, you are more likely to engage with your own learning and development.
From a teaching perspective we strive to create the conditions for students to feel emotionally secure, motivated and eager to learn.
As a way of supporting our students with their mental health, and our teachers with achieving greater student engagement, we are running a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) of the eQuoo gamification app designed for supporting the mental health of young people aged 16 to 18 years. Activate Learning is taking this forward in collaboration with NCG and eQuoo (part of PsychApps), and the trial will run from February 2024 to the summer of 2025.
The app is based on research into cognitive behavioural psychology, positive psychology and systematic family therapy. It is designed to engage young people in different stories as they play the games against themselves using an avatar and progressing through different levels.
In the process, they encounter situations which prompt learning about how to deploy different skills. Over time they develop a psychological toolkit that helps with building key skills such as resilience, relationship management and developing a growth mindset.
The stories are particularly helpful for students who find it challenging to articulate their emotions verbally. Through engaging with a visual story, they are more likely to develop the ability to regulate their own emotions better, as part of a state of heightened self-awareness.
As we know, the use of technology to support mental health and wellbeing is already commonplace, with a whole range of apps available to support regular exercise, improved diet and all-round wellness. This trend is set to accelerate with the rapid pace of developments in AI.
Within education, AI will enable teachers to have a ‘virtual assistant’ to support them with their workload, whilst for students there will be the opportunity of having a ‘virtual personal coach’ to support them through their studies.
We are embracing these technologies and hope that with the right deployment, at the right time, they will have a profound impact on our students’ mental and physical wellbeing.
This truly is an exciting time for transforming education and people’s lives for the better.