Through multiple independent evaluations, students participating in our School Wellbeing Program have shown measurable wellbeing improvements compared to students at schools that aren’t involved.
After six years with the program, students showed a:
Students were found to have:
Through COVID-19 (2019-2021), students had:
Higher scores across all positive mental health outcomes, including life satisfaction, hope and coping skills.
Significantly lower odds of mental illness (34% lower for anxiety and 47% lower for depression).
The importance of a whole-school, long-term approach to student wellbeing.
This independent evaluation by Monash University examines the effectiveness of our School Wellbeing Program using a sample of over 40,000 secondary school students across Australia. The findings speak to the significant benefits of its long-term implementation for the mental health of school communities.
A quasi-experimental study with an intervention and a control group was used to evaluate The Resilience Project’s School Wellbeing Program in 40,149 students across 102 schools in 2023. Data collected included sociodemographic information and outcomes derived from validated scales, included life satisfaction, hope, coping skills, anxiety and depression. Intervention schools were arranged by the number of years they had implemented the program, and mixed-effects regression models were used to evaluate the program.
The study used a sample of students from Year 7 to Year 12 in Australian secondary schools, with a mean age of 14. The intervention group included approximately 20,000 students that have been part of The Resilience Project’s School Wellbeing Program and the control group included approximately 20,000 students who have not been involved in the program. Both groups completed the Resilient Youth (RY) Student Resilience Survey.
As the study did not randomly allocate participating schools into the intervention and control groups, the possibility of selection bias exists which means participants of the two groups may be systematically different from each other in a way that’s not due to chance alone.
The second major limitation is that pre-test results were not available. Ideally, it would be best to measure the mental health outcomes both before and after an intervention takes place as the groups may differ from each other in systematic ways which can influence the outcomes. This could not be done in this study as the data was all anonymous to help students feel comfortable to honestly respond to the questions in the survey.
The study has attempted to counteract these two biases by controlling for plausible confounders, including grade, gender, socioeconomic and rurality status.
The third limitation is that the responses could only be collected by students that were willing and present on the day of the survey due to the anonymous nature of the survey.
Furthermore, it is easy to presume that the intervention schools were better resourced than the control schools and that this might explain the results. However, it was found in this study that the intervention schools in the sample were actually from less well-resourced areas, including a higher proportion from low SES, rural and remote settings.
A big thank you to Roshini Balasooriya Lekamge, Professor Dragan Ilic, Dr Nazmul Karim, Dr Leo Chen, Monash University and Resilient Youth Australia for making this independent evaluation possible and for their ongoing commitment to mental health and wellbeing.
The full article has been published in BJPsych Open and can be accessed here.
This evaluation found students who participated in our program experienced:
Increased confidence and self esteem
Stronger relationships.
Increased ability to express emotions.
More supportive classroom environments.
A mixed-methods evaluation was conducted in 2019 to examine the impacts and outcomes of The Resilience Project in the school context, focusing on:
The methods included pre- and post-surveys to measure change over time. The student results were compared to students from non-participating schools, to ensure the changes noted could be attributed to the program and not just from student maturation.
There were also several parent/carer interviews, teacher interviews, student focus groups and student case studies, in an effort to gain deeper insights into the nature of the program and its impact. These included:
This research was conducted by researchers from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at The University of Melbourne. The research team includes Professor Lisa Gibbs, Dr Lauren Carpenter, Dr Elena Swift, Ms Hannah Morrice and Dr Karen Block. Additional investigators providing expert advice included Professor Nicola Reavley, Dr Rebecca Armstrong, Professor Andrew Mackinnon, Ms Janette Cook, Mr Derek McCormack, Professor Lou Harms and Mr Jason Gaffee.
The University of Melbourne recruitment and data collection team included: Dr Anna Barrett, Ms Kathryn Young, Dr Dakhina Mitra, Ms Kate Burke, and Ms Molly Harrington
The evaluation was conducted with six primary schools implementing the program (544 students) and six schools that were not implementing the program (469 students) used for comparison data.
All participating students were aged between 8 and 12 (Grades 4 to 6), with a mean age of 10.6 years.
The evaluation also provided great insights into how the program could be further strengthened. We have already implemented several improvements and will continue to develop our programs in response to the findings and feedback.
Areas for further improvement
During COVID-19 students participating in our School Wellbeing Program saw the following impacts (compared to students in non-TRP schools):
Stable emotional wellbeing
TRP participants maintained consistent emotional wellbeing and life satisfaction in contrast to those that did not participate in the program.
Improved social wellbeing
TRP participants experienced an increase in perceived support over the period from their peers and the wider school community. This differed to non-TRP participants, who experienced a steady decline.
Consistent physical wellbeing
TRP students that participated in the program exhibited consistent levels of healthy behaviours in comparison to those students who were not involved in the program.
Prior to COVID, the Mental Health Productivity Commission had identified that young people are disproportionately impacted by poor mental health and suicide and that a focus on prevention and early intervention was critical.
In Jan 2022, The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) released a report on The Indirect Impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic on young people and Adolescence”. It reiterated that not only do we need to support young people in a preventative manner but also “highlighted the importance of schools beyond academic learning, where the social, emotional, and physical health of children and young people can also be supported”.
Acknowledging the challenges experienced by young people throughout the pandemic, The Resilience Project wanted to further understand the impact on their mental health and ensure the TRP school program best met the current needs of young Australians.
Through the established partnership with Resilient Youth Australia (RY), all schools which participate in The Resilience Project schools program are invited to complete the scientifically validated resilience survey on an annual basis. The University of Adelaide, led by Dr Mark Kohler, was then able to conduct an independent review, analysing and comparing the data collected from the schools that participated in The Resilience Project schools program in 2019, 2020 and 2021 (83,002 students) with those that did not participate (79,699 students).
The sample included the data collected from the schools that participated in The Resilience Project schools program in 2019, 2020 and 2021 (83,002 students) with those that did not participate (79,699 students).
Overall, this evaluation demonstrates the strong outcomes that can be achieved by proactively supporting young Australians in the school environment. Providing the tools and interventions to build resilience can significantly lower the risk of mental illness and buffer the negative effects of stressful life events. It also references the importance of taking a long term approach and that the ongoing provision of the program (across consecutive years) affords greater maintenance of wellbeing.
We’ve partnered with over 1,100 schools in 2025.
We’ve supported over 1,000 early years services since 2015.