How StREAM combats the ‘real danger that people can slip through the gaps’
A recent BBC InDepth news article explored the issue of student mental health, arguing that students are being failed by their universities. The article goes on to ask whether responsibility for student mental health should be within the remit of universities, as educational establishments.
This blog demonstrates how the StREAM engagement analytics platform can effectively identify and support students with wellbeing concerns to help focus attention where it’s needed most.
The complexities around student mental wellbeing
Multiple universities have increased their spend on specialist wellbeing support in recent years in response to an almost quadrupling of students declaring mental health conditions to their institutions.
This increased spend needs to be contextualised against a backdrop of severe financial challenge for institutions indicating – as far as is possible in respect of hundreds of independent institutions – that universities take their responsibility to support student wellbeing seriously.
As of 2024/25, 113 universities are signed up to the University Mental Health Charter Programme and 17 have received the University Mental Health Charter Award in recognition of their commitment and progress in this area.
But effective support for each and every university student is no mean feat.
The latest HESA data reports 2,904,425 student enrolments for 2023/24. Even if all academics undertake the role of personal academic tutor – which they don’t – with around 240,420 academic staff employed at institutions, that’s around 12 students per academic.
Our work with universities shows that where academic staff are the initial named point of contact for student support issues, they are more likely to have around 30 students each.
Where this role has been professionalised, often a small number of staff are overseeing hundreds of students. The difference is that those professional staff are probably able to dedicate most, if not all, their working hours to student support and outreach.
No-one is arguing that the situation isn’t complex.
On the one hand are the personal stories of students or, tragically, their families, who have not received the help they need in a timely way. On the other, some argue that the challenges of everyday life – including starting and succeeding at university – are being increasingly pathologised.
As such, there is a need to educate people about the differences between mental health challenges and diagnosed mental illnesses.
Using data to navigate the complexity of student lives
The StREAM student engagement analytics platform is designed to help staff facing considerable time and workload pressures to navigate the complexity of student lives.
StREAM visualises student engagement activity at the individual level and compares it to what is ‘normal’ for students in the same cohort. Academic tutors, support staff and even the students themselves can determine where engagement behaviour differs from the norm in unexpected ways, enabling them to act early.
The importance of early action cannot be understated.
Where responsibility for a small group of tutees (whether 12, 30 or more) is delegated to academic tutors, data insights can help tutors get to know their students and highlight when they might be struggling in the transition to university or when ‘life’ starts to impact their ability to study.
A joined-up ecosystem of support
StREAM doesn’t seek to presume which personal characteristics or other relevant information about a student may, at any given time, be impacting on their ability to study. Unrelated issues may impact on engagement, e.g. poor course design or delivery.
Data can’t tell you why a student is disengaged, but it can indicate that a student would benefit from a supportive outreach conversation. Moreover, the end-to-end interventions lifecycle in StREAM helps prevent exactly the issue identified in the BBC article – that of students falling through the gaps.
Multiple university staff are now trained as Mental Health First Aiders, able to recognise signs of mental anxiety and distress and converse effectively with students (and colleagues). But they are not specialist mental health and wellbeing practitioners.
The ability within StREAM to effectively refer students needing specialist support to those practitioners – and close the loop in terms of responsibility – is key for early access to support.
Recording in StREAM that a student referral has been picked up by the specialist practitioner helps provides accountability, an audit trail and reassurance to the staff referrer and to the student that they have not been forgotten.
Working within the available resource envelope for student wellbeing is increasingly challenging.
Engagement data in StREAM can proactively identify risks to student health and wellbeing early, as the first stage in a wider and more complex ecosystem of student support, thus mitigating the risk of worsening health.
Early intervention is therefore an essential first step in the road to longer-term health, wellbeing and academic success.
