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Staff wellbeing continues to sit high on the agenda for schools. But how do wellbeing initiatives translate into meaningful, on-the-ground change? This blog post focuses on the evaluation of a staff wellbeing training programme for senior school staff, delivered by Northern Ireland’s Educational Psychology Service. The programme consisted of four 60-minute online sessions exploring school culture, stress and burnout, the wellbeing lead role, and a toolkit of strategies. Cluster meetings were facilitated to explore practice-based issues. As part of the evaluation, factors that enabled or constrained training transfer were considered.

The evaluation: Initial findings

Guided by Kirkpatrick’s (1959) four-level model, our evaluation used pre-, post- and four-month follow-up surveys in 2023 with 117 senior school staff from 110 schools across Northern Ireland, combining Likert-scale and open-ended items. The evaluation was shaped by a more critical question: What enables wellbeing training to transfer into practice? This question is often overlooked, despite evidence that only a proportion of professional learning is enacted in practice and that transfer depends on context (Blume et al., 2010). Participants’ reactions were overwhelmingly positive. Staff valued having protected space to reflect on wellbeing, reporting increased clarity about what meaningful wellbeing work involved. Comparison of pre-, post- and follow-up surveys revealed significant increases in self-reported confidence. Participants felt better able to recognise signs of stress and burnout, initiate conversations about wellbeing, and to understand the wellbeing lead role.

From confidence to change

While this was encouraging, our evaluation recognised that confidence alone was insufficient to ensure transfer. Where transfer occurred, it tended to begin with small, deliberate shifts rather than large-scale initiatives. Participants described checking in more intentionally with colleagues, approaching familiar routines with greater awareness of wellbeing, and initiating conversations that had previously felt difficult. As one participant noted: ‘it was fantastic to attend a course that has time built in to actually action and implement changes.’ These micro-practices were light on resources but were perceived as meaningful relational changes. This aligns with wider research linking relationships, collegiality and leadership quality to staff wellbeing.

What helped or hindered?

The clarity offered regarding the wellbeing lead role emerged as a key mediating factor. This enabled participants to define responsibilities and articulate realistic expectations within their schools. Where roles were clearly understood, wellbeing work progressed more consistently; with ambiguity, momentum was harder to sustain. This reflects research on collective efficacy, which highlights shared understanding as foundational for translating learning into action (Donohoo, 2018).

‘Where roles were clearly understood, wellbeing work progressed more consistently; with ambiguity, momentum was harder to sustain.’

Dialogue emerged as another important mechanism of early transfer. Participants reported more open conversations about workload, emotional strain and emerging pressures following training. These shifts suggest that one valuable outcome of wellbeing training is the creation of shared language and permission to discuss issues often experienced privately, with one participant reflecting that ‘our school is not alone in where it is in terms of staff wellbeing’. Recent large-scale research reinforces this finding. For example, Dublin City University’s CREATE Teacher Occupational Wellbeing Research (2025) reports high levels of burnout among Irish teachers, identifying workload, organisational factors and school culture as key contributors.

Contextual pressures strongly shaped what was possible. Wider system demands, including limited time, competing priorities and workload, were identified as constraints on implementation. These barriers were not framed as a lack of commitment but as structural realities of school life. The evaluation highlighted that obstacles to training transfer are often located in systems rather than individuals, reinforcing the need to look beyond individual behaviour change when evaluating wellbeing initiatives.

Implications

Overall, this evaluation suggests that wellbeing training can strengthen understanding, build confidence, and prompt early relational change, but it cannot, in isolation, overcome structural pressures or guarantee sustained cultural transformation. Training transfer depends heavily on the systems into which learning is introduced.

For schools and policymakers, the implication is clear. Professional learning matters, but the conditions that enable its use matter more. If staff wellbeing is to move beyond performative activity, attention must shift from simply accessing training to creating the conditions in which wellbeing-informed practice can take root.

References

Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T. T., & Huang, J. L. (2010). Transfer of training: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Management, 36(4), 1065–1105.

Donohoo, J. (2018). Collective efficacy: How educators’ beliefs impact student learning. Corwin.

Fitzsimons, S., O’Farrell, P., & Furlong, C. (2025). Teacher occupational wellbeing research 2025: Executive summary. DCU CREATE, Dublin City University.

Kirkpatrick, D. L. (1959). Techniques for evaluating training programs. Journal of the American Society of Training Directors, 13(11), 3–9.