Great Place to Study

Cultivating wellbeing of the educational community to flourish excellence

Great Place to Study addresses the critical need for wellbeing (WB) in education as identified by leading global organizations OECD, WHO, WEF, UN etc. Our innovation is a WB process that measures the school WB with the School Flourishing Index (SFI), provides a detailed report with data driven action plan personalized to each community for driving anual sustainable change nurturing a WB culture.

bookmark_border

Bookmark

HundrED 2025

play_arrow

Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

HundrED Global Collection 2025

Web presence

2021

Established

500K

Children

9

Countries

Target group

Community

Updated

August 2024

We aspire to revolutionize education by placing wellbeing at the core of our educational systems, not as an added feature, but as a fundamental design principle. Our aim is to create globally relevant educational approaches that prioritize the flourishing of communities and individual success. Equity is central to this vision, ensuring that every learner has equal access to opportunities.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

To harness the power of student voice and experience to drive meaningful changes in education based on measurable data driven processes. We aim to cultivate learning environments that nurture wellbeing to flourish excellence within educational communities. Wellbeing is our design principle to assesses and inform decision making in teaching and learning practices and community life.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

Annual cycle for K-12 Institutions
*Pre-assessment gauges readiness for the evaluation process
*Communication campaign: raises awareness to engage the educational community effectively in the process
*Evaluation takes place during the school schedule in class through a personalized link students login to the SFI (School Fulfillment Index) platform to answer questions within the GPTS indicators. Parents and teachers answer individually from home or school
*Data is processed, tested, correlated and transformed into a robust report filled with detailed analysis results
*Results synthesis is delivered
*Certification is obtained (achieving a minimum score)
*Action Plan crafted by Great place to Study & school leadership team with short, mid and longterm objectives
*Priorities are tailored to what is most valued by the community to allocate resources accordingly
*GPTS follow up every 3 months to ensure successful implementation and transformation of school wellbeing culture.

How has it been spreading?

Our reach extends widely across the Americas region, including countries such as Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina. We are creating partnerships with prominent school groups and networks who are interested in making an effort to build a global community of schools that prioritize wellbeing in the educational sector. Currently, we are launching into new markets in Europe and North America furthering our mission to drive positive change and innovation in education on a global scale.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

To experience the transformative potential of GPTS for your institution, simply reach out to us through our webpage https://www.greatplacetostudy.com or via email andrea@greatplacetostudy.com to schedule a personal introduction to our evaluation & certification process. We eagerly await the opportunity to learn more about your institution and tailor a proposal unique to your school's profile.

Impact & scalability

HundrED Academy Reviews

A step-by-step action plan is sometimes exactly what a student needs. Great Place to Study is highly adaptable towards a student's needs. As much as possible, the individual struggles of each student are considered.

Many in the Latin American countries lack the proper access to decent education. With plenty of team effort, and a drive for a better future, Great Place to Study caters to many of the Spanish speaking countries, but features in English as well.

- Academy member

Academy review results

Impact

Scalability

Exceptional

High

Moderate

Limited

Insufficient

Exceptional

High

Moderate

Limited

Insufficient

Media

Educational Excellence begins with a whole school commitment to implement a wellbeing process that nurtures student (individual) and community (teachers, parents, administrators, non-teaching staff) flourishment. https://www.greatplacetostudy.com/

"Schools should be a place where the cognition, ideas, and thoughts generated by students are nurtured and celebrated, and when combined with SEL and well-being, the future possibilities and dreams of students are accelerated and realized." Andrew Sherman, VP LATAM Cognia

Leaders in education receive the Great Place to Study certification for creating well-being learning communities all over the country. For the fourth consecutive year, they celebrated Educational Excellence 2024, Flourishing Wellbeing in Education, in which they recognized the efforts of over 25 schools. These schools stood out for their holistic approach, prioritizing wellbeing of the community.

Jaime Miloslavich, General Director of Colegio Americano Anáhuac, said, "This certification entails the commitment to stay at the forefront of education and provides us with measurement tools to monitor our progress. Most importantly, Great Place to Study has allowed us to prepare an action plan that will be constantly reviewed to achieve the expected objectives."

"Numerous scientific findings from global organizations that oversee health, education, and human development demonstrate an intrinsic connection between well-being and the learning process, which is the pathway to achieving educational excellence." stated Andrea Ferrari, CEO of Great Place to Study.

Implementation steps

1. Project planning and platform configuration

GPTS will conduct a checklist meeting with the head of school and school project manager in order to set out dates for the process and set up the school dashboard on the School Flourishmen Index (SFI) assessment platform. Project manager will upload the school profile into the dashboard and the database (unique user codes created by the school) for each participant. Great Place to Study does not collect any identifiers from participants as data is collected anonymously and protected for privacy.

2. School leaders pre-assessment

GPTS evaluation process kicks off with the leadership meeting. Head of school together with principals from each section and administrative leaders such as admissions and communications complete the pre-assessment activity individually and anonymously. This exercise will reveal blind spots by comparing expectations vs reality. Understanding this alignment or lack thereof adds a fundamental layer of interpretation and analysis to the final results.

3. Evaluation

GPTS configures the platform and sends the school project manager 4 links to be distributed to the participants of each stakeholder group: student link, teacher link, parent link and alumni link.
Informative sessions are held with teachers and parents in order to provide context, illustrate the process and gain 100% participation. Internal and external communication messages are prepared by GPTS in coordination with the institution and launched by the school according the communication plan.

4. School report and results delivery

School data is collected, processed, tested and correlated through Great Place to Study SFI tool.
A robust 200 page report is prepared filled with insights and analytics. Results are synthesized and presented to the school leadership team. Layers of interpretations are woven together and presented: pre-assessment, KPI scores, correlation and factor analysis to outline priorities unique to the school community along with commendations and recommendations.

5. Action Plan

Action plan is crafted with specific recommendations by GPTS and complimented with the school leadership team vision. Actions are grounded in aspects marked as priority and most valued by the community in order to allocate resources accordingly. A timeline is traced for short, mid and long term actions with follow up meetings held periodically in order to ensure successful implementation throughout the anual cycle. School wellbeing culture is nurtured and strengthened by all.

6. GPTS Certification

Institutions achieving over the minimum overall score of 3.51 (out of 5 stars) will be certified by GPTS. GPTS communication team aligns the comm's strategy around certification including: interview to the head of school, press release (optional), school wide ceremony revealing the certification plaque and results to the community (institutional commitments towards improvement), school profile is uploaded and launched in the GPTS webpage; certification is announced in GPTS official channels.

7. Follow Up

The action plan follow-up is a concise process that involves reviewing and assessing the progress made on implemented strategies, identifying any deviations or obstacles encountered, and making necessary adjustments to ensure the successful achievement of predefined goals and objectives within the specified timeframe.