By Mrs Hudson-Findley, Director of Digital Learning, Enterprise and Sustainability

PAUSE. CHECK. REST. How a Research Partnership Became a Whole School Digital Strategy

There is a particular kind of professional satisfaction that comes from watching an idea move from a spreadsheet to a school hall. This year, Mrs Page (Geography Teacher)  and I experienced it across the whole school.

It started, as the best strategies do, with evidence. In 2025-26, Bedford Girls’ School participated in a landmark research project with the University of York, a survey of 542 of our own students, led by Dr Emma Sullivan and Professor Lisa Henderson from the Department of Psychology. The findings were significant. Forty-nine per cent of students said phone use sometimes or often affects their school performance. Students aged 16 and over were averaging just under seven hours of sleep on school nights – well below the recommended eight to ten. Half of them were on their phones after 10pm. The data was not surprising, exactly, but seeing it mapped so precisely to our own community made it so insightful to what our young people are experiencing.

The key question was how we could leverage the data to make a whole school change

Our answer was the Three Good Things Strategy – a whole-school framework for positive screen health and responsible AI use, designed to be understood and practised by every student from Year 3 to Year 13. Three principles. Three memorable phrases. The same framework in every year group, deepening as students grow.

Pause Before You Post – think first, tap second. Before sending, sharing or prompting, ask: is it kind, true and necessary?

Check the Source – AI and Social Media can get it wrong. Convincing does not mean accurate. The habit of verification is one of the most important skills we can build in young people right now.

Rest Your Eyes and Mind – Pause Before you Pick Up. Before reaching for a device, ask: do I actually need this? Could my own thinking serve me better here?

Simple in principle. Genuinely demanding in practice.

What has made this strategy feel different from others we have worked on is the breadth of its reach. Differentiated assemblies were delivered across all year groups, with age-specific activities and discussion – a game for Year 3, a bias audit for the Lower Sixth. Form time resource packs gave every tutor a 20-minute session with slides, a student activity sheet and a full delivery script. Focus groups put student voices at the centre of how the strategy develops. Parents heard the evidence directly at our Online Forum. The conversation has moved beyond the classroom, which is exactly where it needed to go.

The piece we are most proud of sits with our Lower Sixth Digital and Enterprise students. Asked to produce a peer-to-peer Screen Health Guide – written in their own voice, for their own school – they are deep in the work. Watching sixth formers debate where the line sits between AI assistance and academic dishonesty, or interrogating why 66% of students their age sleep with their phone next to the bed, is exactly what this strategy was designed to produce. Not compliance. Ownership. The guide will be shared with the whole school community when it is ready, and I have no doubt it will be worth the wait.

Pause. Check. Rest.

Three habits. Not rules, not restrictions – just three honest questions that students can carry with them into every lesson, every conversation, every late-night scroll. The research told us where we were. The students are deciding where we go next.