Annual Trends Report 2025-26
Student and staff wellbeing insights from 160+ schools across 30+ countries.
A wellbeing score on its own tells a story, but context gives it a voice.
Every day, educators across the global Komodo network collect invaluable insights into student and staff wellbeing. This report aggregates and anonymises that data, offering a comprehensive perspective on regional and global trends. By layering your school’s internal data against broader global benchmarks, regional trends, and year-level comparisons, you gain a clearer understanding of what is happening within your unique community and exactly where your care is most needed.
As you work through the report, consider:
- How your school compares against regional and global trends
- Whether patterns differ across year levels or cohorts
- What existing strengths could be leveraged to support identified focus areas
Importantly, the goal of wellbeing measurement is not to achieve “100%” across every domain. Wellbeing naturally fluctuates over time and is shaped by developmental stage, environmental demands, cultural context, and broader global factors. In many areas, some challenge or variability is expected and developmentally normal.
Key pillars of the report
- Global & regional benchmarking: Evaluate your student and staff wellbeing outcomes alongside regional and year-level averages to understand the broad state of school wellbeing.
- Evidence-informed strategy: Strengthen your strategic planning with robust, network-wide data that validates and backs up your pastoral intuition.
- Proactive focus areas: The areas highlighted throughout this report are intentionally grouped into strengths, areas to monitor, and focus areas. This approach is designed to help schools recognise what is working well, identify trends that may require closer observation over time, and prioritise areas where earlier support or intervention may have the greatest impact. By framing data in this way, the report supports balanced, proactive decision-making that builds on existing strengths while helping schools respond early to emerging wellbeing needs.
- Product alignment: The language, themes, and wellbeing domains used throughout this report are intentionally aligned with the terminology and framework used within Komodo, making it easy for schools to connect report findings directly to their in-platform data, insights, and action planning.
- Longitudinal shifts: As an annual report, the value of this data grows over time, enabling year-on-year comparison to track how student and staff wellbeing evolves and to assess the longer-term impact of initiatives against wider macro trends.
Psychology & data note: All data within this report is aggregated and fully anonymised. In alignment with Komodo’s commitment to proactive, strength-based psychology. These benchmarks are designed to highlight opportunities for growth, connection, and systemic support rather than focusing on deficit-framed metrics.
How to use this report: You can jump between sections using the chapter navigation menu below and switch regions with the filter below. Click on any theme card to expand the details beneath it. Happy reading!
Overall wellbeing
Average overall student wellbeing score across the network.
About this score
Average overall wellbeing gives schools a broad picture of how students are functioning across all measured areas of wellbeing. This score is calculated using the full range of wellbeing questions and survey combinations completed by students, bringing together multiple domains into a single overall indicator. Because surveys can vary across schools, year levels, and timepoints, the score reflects patterns across all available wellbeing data rather than the result of any one question or survey alone.
Global average
+1 from 2024
2024 vs 2025 (Global)
The 2024 and 2025 data are displayed side by side to support year-on-year comparison. The number shown in green/red represents the difference between the two scores, allowing schools to quickly identify areas of improvement or decline over time.
Wellbeing themes
Click any theme to see regional breakdown, definition and recommended actions.
What this theme measures
Social Wellbeing reflects a student’s relationships with peers, social connectedness, sense of belonging, and perceived social support within their community.
Key strength
Social Wellbeing is a clear strength in this region, reflecting strong peer relationships, high levels of connection, and a well-established sense of belonging across the student community.
This is a significant asset for any school, particularly in an increasingly uncertain global context where adolescents are navigating higher levels of external stress and change.
Strong social networks act as a protective factor during this stage, buffering stress, strengthening emotional resilience, and providing stability when wider systems feel unpredictable.
Importantly, this strength can be intentionally leveraged across other areas of wellbeing by using peer connection to support engagement, normalise help-seeking, and strengthen participation and culture at a whole-school level.
Classroom action
- Intentionally leverage strong peer relationships through structured collaborative learning, peer feedback, and group problem-solving tasks.
- Reinforce positive peer interactions in real time to strengthen prosocial behaviour and deepen classroom connection.
- This matters because strong social connections increase engagement, motivation, and persistence, while also providing a protective buffer during periods of academic or personal challenge.
School-wide action
- Sustain and further strengthen high levels of social connectedness by embedding consistent opportunities for student connection across year levels, co-curricular participation, and whole-school initiatives that reinforce belonging and positive peer culture.
- Use cohort wellbeing data to understand how strong social wellbeing may be supporting other domains such as engagement, emotional regulation, and school climate, and intentionally leverage this strength across broader wellbeing strategy.
- This is important because social wellbeing is a key developmental protective factor in adolescence, strongly linked to resilience, help-seeking, and overall wellbeing.
Recommended resources from the Komodo Resource Hub
- The neuroscience of trust blog
- Identifying and resisting peer pressure blog
What this theme measures
Spiritual Wellbeing reflects a student’s sense of meaning, purpose, values, identity, and connection to beliefs, culture, or faith.
Key strength
Spiritual Wellbeing is a key strength within this region, indicating that many students experience a sense of meaning, identity, and connection to values, culture, or belief systems.
This is an important developmental asset, as a strong sense of purpose is closely linked to motivation, resilience, and the ability to navigate challenge.
This strength can be further supported by continuing to provide diverse opportunities for students to explore identity and meaning across learning, culture, and school life.
Classroom action
- Create opportunities for students to connect learning to meaning, purpose, and personal values through reflection, discussion, and authentic learning contexts.
- Encourage students to explore identity and perspective in ways that respect diverse cultural, spiritual, and personal worldviews.
- This matters because a strong sense of meaning and purpose supports motivation, engagement, and resilience, particularly during periods of challenge or change.
School-wide action
- Strengthen opportunities for students to explore identity, meaning, and belonging through a broad range of curricular and co-curricular experiences that reflect diverse cultural, spiritual, and personal perspectives.
- Embed inclusive practices that recognise and respect different belief systems and ways of making meaning across the school community.
- Use wellbeing data to understand how students are experiencing purpose and connection across cohorts and ensure this informs wider pastoral and curriculum planning.
- This is important because spiritual wellbeing contributes to identity formation, motivation, and long-term engagement in learning.
Recommended resources from the Komodo Resource Hub
- Establishing core values worksheets
- Gratitude classroom exercises
What this theme measures
School Climate reflects students’ perceptions of the overall school environment, including sense of belonging, inclusivity, relationships, support, and interactions with peers and staff.
Classroom action
- Intentionally build positive day-to-day classroom experiences that reinforce respect, connection, and inclusion through consistent routines, fair expectations, and opportunities for student voice.
- Actively acknowledge positive peer and learning interactions to strengthen a sense of shared culture within the classroom.
- This matters because everyday classroom experiences are a primary driver of how students perceive school, shaping their engagement, motivation, and willingness to participate in learning.
School-wide action
- Strengthen a whole-school culture where belonging, respect, and connection are consistently reinforced across all environments, not dependent on individual staff or isolated experiences.
- Use cohort wellbeing data to identify patterns in students’ perceptions of school experience across year levels, and use this to guide targeted and developmentally appropriate culture-building initiatives.
- This is important because school climate is a core determinant of how students experience school on a daily basis, and when it is consistent and intentionally shaped, it supports stronger engagement, participation, and overall connection to school life.
Recommended resources from the Komodo Resource Hub
- Understanding the fundamentals of wellbeing with PERMA-V guide
- Creating an inclusive classroom blog
What this theme measures
Emotional Wellbeing reflects a student’s mental health, emotional awareness, emotional regulation, and ability to understand, express, and manage emotions effectively.
Classroom action
- Explicitly support students to develop emotional regulation skills by embedding short, structured opportunities to notice, name, and regulate emotions during learning time (e.g., check-ins, reset strategies, reflection points).
- Teachers play an active role in modelling regulation strategies in real time, helping students understand what effective emotional management looks like in practice.
- This matters because emotional regulation is closely linked to attention, persistence, and learning readiness, and when it is taught and reinforced in the moment, students are better able to stay engaged and recover from challenge without disengaging.
School-wide action
- Prioritise upskilling teachers and staff in recognising, responding to, and explicitly teaching emotional regulation strategies so this becomes a consistent, shared capability across the school rather than an individual practice.
- Establish a common language and approach for emotional regulation, alongside clear support pathways and coordinated pastoral responses.
- Use school wide wellbeing data to identify cohort-level emotional patterns and inform targeted, preventative support.
- This is important because when staff are equipped with shared skills and confidence in co-regulation and emotional support, students experience more consistent responses across environments, strengthening safety, regulation, and learning engagement at a whole-school level.
Recommended resources from the Komodo Resource Hub
- Steps to emotion regulation success guide
- Validation guide
What this theme measures
Achievement and Learning reflects a student’s engagement with academics and learning. This includes motivation, confidence in learning, workload management, and experiences of academic stress.
Classroom action
- Reduce cognitive load through clear structure, block tasks, and timely feedback, while reinforcing engagement by recognising effort, strategy use, and persistence.
- Brief check-ins can be used to monitor stress, motivation, and confidence, enabling early adjustments before disengagement or overload develops.
- This matters because it helps students access learning more effectively in the moment, strengthens motivation through controllable feedback, and allows teachers to respond to early signs of strain before they become barriers to achievement.
School-wide action
- Consider using targeted questions to explore the cohort experience of workload, motivation, and confidence.
- Increase staff awareness during known high-stress periods (e.g., assessment blocks, transitions, exam periods).
- Use this information to guide small adjustments in workload, pacing, and support before issues become more entrenched.
- This is important because it helps identify system-level pressure points early, ensures workload is more evenly managed across subjects, and enables the school to prevent avoidable stress rather than respond to it once it has escalated.
Recommended resources from the Komodo Resource Hub
- Cope ahead guide for exam time
- Komodo conversations guide
What this theme measures
Physical Wellbeing reflects a student’s physical health, including movement, physical activity, nutrition, energy levels, and general physical functioning.
Classroom action
- Support physical wellbeing through small, consistent practices within the classroom such as encouraging regular movement breaks, varying posture and activity demands, and being mindful of sustained periods of sedentary work.
- Where possible, link physical state to learning by helping students notice how energy, movement, and hydration can influence focus and engagement.
- This matters because physical wellbeing directly impacts attention, energy regulation, and cognitive performance, all of which are essential for effective learning.
School-wide action
- Promote a whole-school culture that supports daily movement, consistent routines that reduce prolonged sedentary time, and accessible opportunities for physical activity across the school day.
- This includes reinforcing shared expectations around activity breaks and ensuring environments support healthy physical habits alongside academic demands.
- Use wellbeing data to better understand cohort energy levels and engagement patterns across the year.
- This is important because physical wellbeing underpins cognitive functioning and emotional regulation, and small system-level shifts in daily movement and routine can meaningfully improve student readiness to learn
Recommended resources from the Komodo Resource Hub
- Healthy movement worksheets
- Eating our way to wellbeing blog
What this theme measures
Digital Wellbeing reflects how students manage technology use, including balance between online and offline life, the impact of screen use on wellbeing, and healthy engagement with digital spaces.
Key focus area
This is a key focus area for student wellbeing that warrants sustained attention.
Research consistently shows that digital wellbeing is closely linked with other areas of wellbeing, including attention, stress regulation, and academic engagement.
As such, it is important to maintain awareness of this area when interpreting broader wellbeing patterns, as changes here may have flow-on effects across student learning and wellbeing.
Schools are encouraged to explore the Komodo resource hub for further targeted resources and practical strategies to support this area.
Classroom action
- Embed clear, consistent “purposeful use” routines for technology, explicitly distinguishing between when devices are being used to support learning and when attention should be device-free.
- Structure lessons to include intentional pauses for processing, discussion, and reflection away from screens, and reinforce effective digital habits by modelling focused, task-aligned device use.
- This matters because it strengthens students’ attention regulation and reduces cognitive fragmentation, helping them engage more deeply with learning tasks while building healthier patterns of digital self-management over time.
School-wide action
- Establish consistent device expectations, including clear device-free zones and shared standards for purposeful use, and align staff, student, and parent understanding through a coordinated digital wellbeing approach focused on balance, attention, and healthy habits.
- Use cohort data to identify early signs of digital overload, distraction, or disengagement, and inform timely adjustments to expectations and support.
- This is important because consistent, whole-school messaging and shared expectations reduce ambiguity around device use, strengthen attention and self-regulation across contexts, and enable early, data-informed responses to emerging digital strain before it impacts learning and wellbeing.
Recommended resources from the Komodo Resource Hub
- Student wellbeing in a digital world guide
- Digital wellbeing audit activity
What this theme measures
Sleep reflects the quality and quantity of sleep a student receives and sleep hygiene practices. This recognises sleep as a key contributor to cognitive functioning, emotional regulation, physical health, and wellbeing.
Key focus area
This is a key focus area for student wellbeing and warrants sustained attention.
Sleep is a foundational pillar of student wellbeing, with strong research links to mood regulation, cognitive performance, learning consolidation, and emotional resilience.
As such, it is important to maintain awareness of this area when interpreting broader wellbeing patterns, as improvements in sleep quality and consistency are likely to have significant flow-on benefits across both wellbeing and academic outcomes.
Schools are encouraged to explore the Komodo resource hub for further targeted resources and practical strategies to support this area.
Classroom action
- Support students to understand the link between sleep and learning by explicitly reinforcing how sleep impacts attention, memory, mood, and stress tolerance.
- Where appropriate, normalise conversations about fatigue and encourage students to reflect on how sleep may be influencing their engagement, focus, and emotional regulation during the school day.
- This matters because sleep is a foundational driver of cognitive performance and emotional stability, and even small improvements in awareness can help students make more informed choices that support their learning and wellbeing.
School-wide action
- Maintain a whole-school awareness of sleep as a foundational wellbeing factor that influences academic engagement, emotional regulation, and physical health.
- Use aggregated wellbeing data to identify patterns in sleep during periods of predicted high stress (e.g., assessment blocks, transitions, examination periods) and take a proactive approach to education and support during these times.
- This can include targeted sleep hygiene education and reinforcing the importance of sleep for learning, memory consolidation, and emotional regulation.
- Schools can also access the Komodo Resource Hub for supporting materials and guidance to strengthen this work across staff, students, and families.
Recommended resources from the Komodo Resource Hub
- Sleep hygiene poster
- Steps to sleep success guide
The wellbeing journey
Wellbeing scores by year level. The transition experience varies across regions — use the region filter at the top of the report to see how the journey looks where your school sits.
Key trend
- Global data shows a steady decline in wellbeing from Year 3 to Year 13, suggesting that as students move through adolescence and face increasing academic, social, and identity-related pressures, wellbeing challenges tend to accumulate over time rather than resolve.
- This aligns with what is known about adolescent development, where growing independence, heightened peer comparison, performance expectations, and compromised ability for emotional regulation due to brain development can place sustained pressure on overall wellbeing.
Key considerations
- Schools should view this trend as a developmental and systems issue rather than an “older student problem.”
- There is value in strengthening protective factors early, particularly during transition years, through proactive wellbeing education, emotional regulation skill development, student voice initiatives, and regular longitudinal wellbeing data collection that helps schools identify when and where wellbeing declines.
Psychological safety
Psychological Safety in Komodo explores whether students feel able to participate, express themselves, take risks, and seek support without fear of embarrassment, exclusion, judgment, or harm. It is understood through three key dimensions: Individual Safety, Learner Safety, and Respect.
- Individual Safety reflects whether students feel personally safe to express themselves, ask for help, and make mistakes without fear of judgment.
- Learner Safety focuses on whether students feel safe to engage in learning, take risks, and grow through mistakes.
- Respect measures whether students feel valued, included, and treated fairly by both peers and staff within the school community.
Why is this a helpful survey to use in your school?
Psychological safety is a foundational element of both wellbeing and learning, and this survey provides a structured, consistent way to understand how safe students feel across key areas of school life. It helps schools move beyond assumptions and anecdotal feedback by giving a clear, student-informed picture of experience across cohorts, year levels, and time.
When used regularly, it supports schools to identify patterns early, track the impact of wellbeing and culture initiatives, and understand where students may be feeling confident, or where barriers to participation and connection may exist. This makes it easier to respond proactively, rather than reactively, to emerging needs.
Individual Safety
Feeling safe to express yourself
Learner Safety
Comfortable taking academic risks
Respect
Feeling valued and accepted
Classroom action
In the classroom, Psychological Safety can be strengthened through simple, consistent practices.
- For Individual Safety, teachers can normalise mistakes by modelling them openly, use regular low-stakes check-ins, teach and rehearse help-seeking language, and respond to errors in calm and predictable ways.
- For Learner Safety, learning is supported by breaking tasks into manageable steps, giving students opportunities to attempt work before receiving help, praising effort and strategies rather than just correctness, and regularly including non-graded participation tasks that reduce pressure while building confidence.
- For Respect, teachers can model inclusive and respectful language, ensure all students have structured opportunities to contribute, address disrespect early and consistently, use restorative conversations where appropriate, and actively notice and name a range of student strengths.
School-wide action
At a whole-school level, Psychological Safety is strengthened through consistent systems, shared language, and aligned expectations.
- For Individual Safety, this includes having consistent expectations for how all staff respond to mistakes and help-seeking, embedding shared language across year levels, and ensuring wellbeing check-in processes are consistent throughout the school.
- For Learner Safety, schools can reinforce the message that learning involves risk and mistakes, support teachers with shared scaffolding and differentiation approaches, and ensure school policies, reporting, and recognition systems don’t over-focus on performance outcomes.
- For Respect, schools benefit from consistent behaviour expectations, strong restorative practices across staff, proactive monitoring of exclusion or peer harm, meaningful student voice structures that influence decisions, and ongoing celebration of diverse forms of achievement across academic, cultural, and social domains.
Staff wellbeing
NEW TO KOMODOFor the first time, this report includes staff wellbeing data. Student wellbeing does not exist in isolation. Staff wellbeing directly impacts school climate, teaching quality and student outcomes.
About this score
Average overall staff wellbeing gives schools a broad picture of how staff are functioning across key aspects of their work and wellbeing. This score brings together multiple domains into a single overall indicator. It reflects patterns across core areas of Work Conditions, Wellbeing, Job Satisfaction, and Belonging and Support, rather than any single question or survey item.
Overall (Global)
These results suggest the foundations are strong. The opportunity schools have now is to use that strong culture and connection as a protective factor to better support staff energy, recovery, and long-term sustainability. Supporting staff wellbeing requires more than isolated wellbeing initiatives. Sustainable staff wellbeing is usually strengthened through everyday culture, leadership practices, workload management, and the conditions staff work within each day.
Interested in tracking staff wellbeing at your school? Contact your school success lead to learn more!
Platform engagement
How schools and students used Komodo across 2025-2026.
What changed this year, and where
Every region in the Komodo network saw overall student wellbeing rise from 2024 to 2025. The Middle East led the lift (+2.1), followed by Global (+1.0), Asia (+0.7), ANZ (+0.5), and Rest of World (+0.1). Seven of eight wellbeing themes improved globally; only Achievement & Learning held flat.
Biggest movers — Global, 2024 → 2025
- Digital Wellbeing +8.9 — the largest single shift in this year’s data. Schools are visibly making progress in this focus area, though it remains the lowest-scoring theme overall.
- Social Wellbeing +2.5 — reinforcing the global strength position.
- Physical Wellbeing +2.3, Sleep +2.0 — both moving in the right direction from previously low bases.
Regional strengths to leverage
- Asia & Middle East: School Climate and Emotional Wellbeing both register as clear strengths — strong everyday relationships and emotional regulation, providing a foundation other domains can build on.
- ANZ: Social Wellbeing leads the network — peer connection is a defining feature of the student experience.
- Middle East: the largest year-on-year wellbeing gain (+2.1 overall), with notably strong Belonging and Support among staff (85.1).
Key takeaway for school leaders
Growth is happening everywhere, and where it’s biggest, schools are doing focused, intentional work.
The considerable improvement in Digital Wellbeing shows that when schools target a focus area with a consistent strategy, the data moves. Pair that approach with the strengths each region already holds, and the next year’s lift can be even greater. The growth across Komodo’s core wellbeing domains isn’t coincidental; it’s a result of schools choosing to engage strategically in student and staff wellbeing and using data to guide focus and decision making that can influence meaningful change in their school community.
Recommendations
Classroom teachers
Pastoral teams
Senior leadership
Next steps with Komodo
- Continue longitudinal wellbeing data collection to track changes over time, identify patterns and emerging trends, and support proactive, evidence-informed decision-making across the school system.
- Use Komodo’s aligned wellbeing resources to support targeted action planning and ongoing reflection across the school community.
- Schools are also encouraged to connect with their dedicated School Success Lead to ensure they are getting the most out of the platform, including setup, survey design, resources and analytics.
Thank you! 💙
Thank you for your ongoing dedication to student and staff wellbeing. The work schools do each day to create safe, connected, supportive, and engaging environments has a profound impact on learning, development, and long-term outcomes for young people.
We appreciate the opportunity to partner with your school through Komodo and look forward to continuing to support your wellbeing journey through ongoing insight, reflection, and longitudinal data over time.
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