How can a multi-academy trust support wellbeing without a one-size-fits-all plan?

If you lead wellbeing across a trust, you've probably felt the pull in two directions. On one side, the board wants consistency: a clear offer, shared standards and something you can report on. On the other, every academy has its own community, its own pressures and its own way of doing things. A plan that works brilliantly in a large secondary can land awkwardly in a small primary down the road.

So should a trust pick one wellbeing programme and roll it out everywhere, or leave each school to decide? The most useful answer we've found is "a bit of both", and recent research backs that up. Here's how we'd think about it.

Why this question matters right now

The need hasn't gone away. NHS England's most recent survey of children and young people's mental health found that 20.3% of 8 to 16 year olds in England had a probable mental disorder in 2023, rising to 23.3% of 17 to 19 year olds. Across a trust of several thousand pupils, that's a lot of children who need the adults around them to feel confident and steady.

Support is growing, but it's still patchy. The Department for Education's June 2026 data release on Mental Health Support Teams shows they now cover around 60% of pupils and learners in England (79% in state-funded secondaries), with a government aim of reaching every school by December 2029. In a trust, that can mean one academy has an MHST and its neighbour doesn't yet. Schools also named staff availability as one of the most common barriers to making the most of that support.

Inspection is part of the picture too. Ofsted's renewed framework, in use since November 2025, grades schools across six areas, including inclusion and a separate area for personal development and well-being. Wellbeing is now something every academy in a trust will be asked to show, in its own context.

What the research says about trusts and pupil wellbeing

A 2026 study by Sarah Holmes and Vicky Sinclair, published in the Journal of Child Development and Education, compared approaches to pupil wellbeing across seven schools in one multi-academy trust in the North West. Their findings are a helpful starting point for any trust leader:

• Context-specific approaches worked best. Strategies built and embedded by the school itself made more difference than frameworks chosen or imposed from outside.
• The trust's role was to support. The trust added most value by scaffolding and equipping schools to carry out their own vision, rather than dictating the detail.
• Whole-school beats single lessons. Wellbeing had more impact when it ran through the whole school day, not just one slot on the PSHE timetable.
• Collaboration and investment in all staff mattered. Communication and teamwork across the whole staff team strengthened the effect on children.

It's one trust and a small sample, so it isn't the final word. But it matches what we see in practice: the trust sets the frame, and each school fills it in.

A shared frame with local choices

Here's a simple way to split the work.

What the trust can hold centrally:

• A short, shared statement of what wellbeing means across the trust, in plain language.
• A common set of simple co-regulation tools (a breathing routine, a calm-down sequence, shared language for feelings) that any adult in any academy can use.
• Training for staff, so these skills don't depend on one enthusiastic person in each school.
• A light-touch way of sharing what's working, such as a termly wellbeing leads' meeting.

What each academy can shape locally:

• When and where wellbeing time happens (morning registration, after lunch, before assessments).
• Which year groups or pupils to focus on first.
• How routines are adapted for SEND and EAL learners in that particular community.
• How it links to local support, such as an MHST where one is in place.

The shared toolkit is what makes things feel joined up for pupils who move between schools, and for staff who work across sites. The local choices are what make it stick.

Don't forget the adults

Children's wellbeing and staff wellbeing are closely linked. A calm, regulated adult makes it much easier for a child to settle. Education Support's Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025 found that 86% of school and college senior leaders feel stressed, and 81% feel they have too many tasks and not enough time. Across all education staff, 87% said they had provided emotional support to pupils at least monthly.

That tells us two things. Staff are already doing a huge amount of emotional work, and any trust-wide plan has to make that work lighter, not heavier. Tools that take two minutes, need no kit and can be used by anyone (a teacher, a TA, a lunchtime supervisor) are far more likely to survive a busy term than a big new programme.

Three questions to ask before you choose anything

1. Will every adult be able to use it, or only specialists? If it relies on one person, it will wobble when they're off or move on.
2. Can each academy adapt it without losing the core? A good offer has a fixed spine and flexible edges.
3. Does it support the whole school day, or sit in one lesson? Short routines at transition points often do more than a weekly slot on its own.

For SEN settings in your trust, our recent post on making calm breaks predictable for pupils with SEND shows what a fixed spine with flexible edges can look like in practice.

How we work with trusts

At BEAM ACADEMY, we deliver yoga, mindfulness and wellbeing sessions across nurseries, primaries, secondaries and SEN settings in London. That means a trust can use one team and one shared set of routines, while each academy's sessions are shaped around its own pupils. You can see how this looks in our yoga and mindfulness sessions for primary schools and our wellbeing sessions for secondary schools. We always leave staff with simple co-regulation tools they can keep using between our visits.

A quick note: yoga and mindfulness support general wellbeing, but they aren't a treatment for any condition. Where there are serious concerns about a child, the right next step is your DSL, SENCO or mental health lead, the family and their GP.

Let's talk about your trust

If you're shaping a wellbeing offer across several schools and would like a sounding board, we'd be glad to help. Get in touch with the team at schools@beam.academy or through beam.academy.

Sources:

• One in five children and young people had a probable mental disorder in 2023 (NHS England, November 2023): https://www.england.nhs.uk/2023/11/one-in-five-children-and-young-people-had-a-probable-mental-disorder-in-2023/
• Mental Health Support Teams coverage and school and college experiences data release (DfE, June 2026): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a1af3e865bc5f798327f55d/Mental_Health_Support_Teams_coverage_and_school_and_college_experiences_data_release.pdf
• Ofsted's new education inspection framework: key changes from November 2025 (Wrigleys via Mondaq): https://www.mondaq.com/uk/education/1694740/ofsteds-new-education-inspection-framework-key-changes-from-november-2025
• Holmes and Sinclair (2026), What is working? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of approaches to pupil well-being in a MAT in NorthWest England, Journal of Child Development and Education 2(1): https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4832/
• Staff wellbeing across the education sector drops to its lowest since 2019 (Education Support, Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025, 18 November 2025): https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/news-and-events/news/staff-wellbeing-across-the-education-sector-drops-to-its-lowest-since-2019/