About Us

What do you want for your children? Most parents respond by saying "I want them to be happy" or similar. However most schools do not teach the skills of happiness and wellbeing - instead they teach achievement, thinking skills, conformity, literacy, numeracy, and discipline - everything but happiness and wellbeing skills. However, this trend is changing and school communities are increasingly concerned about their staff and students wellbeing. Thus there is a need for a tool to assess school wellbeing.

Assessing Wellbeing in Education Ltd (AWE) is a social enterprise that helps schools to measure and track the wellbeing of their school community through Positive Education based online wellbeing assessments. AWE's vision is to make a real world difference by assisting in assessing and increasing school wellbeing worldwide. AWE aims to enact its vision by breaking new frontiers in online wellbeing assessment science. Our products, designed by world leading wellbeing assessment scientists and practitioners, enable and facilitate those who work to improve others wellbeing.

 
Michael Parker

Mr Michael Parker

Managing Director

Managing Director

Michael has been managing AWE since 2014. As the main relationship manager, he regularly checks in with all of the many schools that use AWE around the world, helping them gain insights into the wellbeing of their school community. Using continual feedback from schools, he’s also heavily involved in the further development of AWE so that it remains a leader of wellbeing assessments in schools.
He previously had a career in financial services having worked at Forsyth Barr in Wellington and UBS in Sydney.

Aaron Jarden

Dr Aaron Jarden

Assessment Developer

Assessment Developer

Dr Jarden was the main developer of the AWE assessment. He is currently employed as an Associate Professor in the Centre of Positive Psychology, Melbourne University where he is Director of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program. He is also a wellbeing consultant and social entrepreneur, and co-founder and co-editor of the International Journal of Wellbeing, president of the New Zealand Association of Positive Psychology, lead investigator for the International Wellbeing Study, co-investigator of the Sovereign New Zealand Wellbeing Index, on the board of Action for Happiness Australia, founder of The Tuesday Program, co-founder and Senior Scientist for Work on Wellbeing and others.