Life skills wellbeing edtech for secondary students

Wellbeing among UK children falls sharply from age 12, and is 21% lower at 16 than at age 8\. Loss of agency among UK teenagers is rising alarmingly, life skills are lacking and the UK scores lowest on pupil life satisfaction among all OECD countries. The Covid-19 crisis is exacerbating these problems for our teenagers as their normal routines and social interactions have been lost or greatly disrupted, and they are facing a very uncertain future.

Schools need frameworks and tools to help them address these issues, as well as to meet the new Ofsted 'Personal Development' targets introduced in Sep-19\. This has now become much more urgent due to Covid-19, and these tools will need to be available and effective online, not only in the classroom.

Persona Education Ltd will develop and roll out a life skills wellbeing app for secondary schools to utilise in a PSHE setting. Our Theory of Change research conducted in Dec/Jan 2020 found that headteachers and PSHE teachers across both state and private sector schools believe developing life skills helps pupils to improve wellbeing.

The Persona Life Skills app will provide teenagers with insights strongly grounded in well-established psychology, improving wellbeing and empowering self-growth through a programme of life skills matched to their stage of development. These life skills will be focused on self-management and effective communication with other people - both online and in person.

Our main focus is to improve wellbeing for UK teenagers by providing tools to help secondary schools address issues exacerbated by Covid-19, using a pedagogical approach applicable when learning from home and when back in school, and helping as many teenagers as possible with a technology-led approach.

Extension for Impact funding will be used to expand and accelerate our customer success, sales and marketing activity, making the app available to more schools and colleges for beta testing, in a shorter timeframe. This will mean more students will have access to the app sooner, enabling them to boost their wellbeing by developing life skills. Higher wellbeing has been shown to result in better academic achievement and greater employability, benefiting both individuals and society as a whole. Specifically the additional funding will allow us to create a new customer success role, adopt more efficient customer onboarding, and increase spend on advertising, direct email and website improvement, all of which will contribute to increased customer and user numbers.