Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department uses Office for National Statistics estimates of personal well-being in formulating policy; and what policies his Department has introduced to improve personal well-being in the past 12 months.

The department uses the Office for National Statistics (ONS) wellbeing statistics to inform health and wellbeing policy within the Civil Service. The department also measures personal wellbeing through the annual Civil Service People Survey using the same national statistics that the ONS use for the UK population as a whole.

The four personal well-being questions are: Life Satisfaction, Worthwhile, Happiness, and Anxiety. Further details can be found at the following link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/july2017tojune2018.

Over the past 12 months, the department has:

• provided Wellbeing Confident Leader training to most of our Senior Civil Servants;
• increased the numbers of Mental Health First Aiders;
• started to implement all 11 core and enhanced standards in the Stevenson/Farmer Thriving at Work report; and
• signed up to participate in MIND’s 2020 Wellbeing Index for employers.