Indeed, far from eliciting controversy, these measures were generally welcomed. Of course, schools well understand that children's well-being is critically bound up with their capacity and ability to learn. The educational orthodoxy set in train through Every Child Matters and the Children Act and cemented by the specific duty on schools to promote pupil well-being has considerable traction.
But successfully promoting and then measuring well-being is complex. What schools want to see is where and how they can make changes that improve outcomes within their sphere of influence. Well-used, the indicators should help them do that. For some, though, how inspectors weigh these well-being indicators against hard attainment data during inspection remains a real concern.
In a sense, the technicalities of the measures and their application as they are now miss the wider point. The real progress here is in establishing the promotion of children's well-being in school as both legitimate and, to some extent, measurable.
Government must not leave schools hanging. There is a need for coherence in policy, for active support and a flow of good resources building on the good practice already out there if this well-being reform is to drive home.
The early childhood sector offers much, and it is to be hoped that the Rose Review of the primary curriculum has already seen and is expanding these connections.
So, these indicators don't so much open the debate as frame the times in which we live. Well-being will work for schools because it needs to work for children now and in the future.
It is, then, the end of the beginning. The real ride has only just begun.
Ofsted is right to focus schools on proxy measures, looking to balance this data with subjective perception surveys to establish causality.
