How are schools tackling the increasing mental health and wellbeing challenges seen among young people since Covid? Anne Murdoch and Margaret Mulholland look at what is working well and areas where schools need further support

The spotlight on mental health since the start of the pandemic has brought the challenges faced by schools sharply into focus.

School leaders have reported rising anxiety among children and young people, just as mental health support which should be there to help them has become overwhelmed.

The anxiety and behavioural problems manifesting in schools have taken many forms but include attendance issues, friendship difficulties, eating disorders, and difficulty with curriculum engagement.

The government’s latest state of the nation report, published in February (DfE, 2023a), found growing numbers of children and young people reporting unhappiness, elevated levels of the probable rate of mental health and eating disorders, and an increase in emotional difficulties. Feedback from school leaders suggests there is particular concern around the 11 to 15-year-old age group.

The Department for Education has made grants of £1,200 per institution available to schools and colleges to train mental health leads (see DfE, 2021). This work appears to be helping in some instances, as staff become more aware of how to identify early signs of wellbeing problems and put in place support to help, but far more funding is needed to continue this work and address acute needs.

According the DfE, the majority (95%) of leaders reported clear “buy-in” (to a great or some extent) from their senior leadership team about the importance of addressing mental health and wellbeing activities.

At this time the vast majority of primary (89%) and secondary (87%) schools had a designated lead for students' mental health. Having a mental health lead is associated with increased likelihood of having practices (at least partially embedded) that are indicative of a whole school or college approach. The DfE currently calculates that 57% of schools and colleges have undertaken the senior mental health lead training.

 

Good practice

We know that a whole school approach to wellbeing, where all staff understand what support is needed and engage with this, makes a big difference to children and young people who are experiencing difficulties.

Having staff who are trained to pick up on these difficulties and help with solutions works well.

Those who have attended the senior mental health lead training said their confidence had grown. They valued the action planning that the training provides as this had allowed them to be more strategic rather than reactive to planning provision for the whole school. The opportunity to work as part of a community of practice is also a huge benefit. Established teams that work well together can better get to grips with issues such as anxiety and isolation.

Perhaps the most important step that schools are taking is the time they are investing in working together with families.

As one leader stated: “Avoiding blame for lack of attendance is a big change in the way we have adopted our whole school approach. Expectations are consistent but flexible. We struggled to meet needs last year but now we are clustering with other schools locally to access resources. This has given us greater access and helped us to target support.”

Another leader said: “We are lucky to have a Mental Health Support Team in our area but we don’t see that relationship as a fix; it’s part of a much richer approach that we have adopted. Staff are now far more confident to spot and support any signs of anxiety building and to speak up quickly and look for collaboration with colleagues and with family.”

There are new guidance documents that schools and colleges must be mindful of.

A summary of responsibilities where a mental health issue is affecting attendance has been set out in a guidance document (DfE, 2023b), which builds on the Working together to improve school attendance guidance (DfE, 2022) and clarifies the expectations of schools and local authorities where a student is experiencing social, emotional, or mental health issues that are affecting attendance.

The guidance on school responsibilities where a mental health issue is affecting attendance is helpful and highlights the importance of early identification. However, schools are telling us that what is most important is the development of relationships with students’ parents and staff. If that early identification is to happen, it takes partnership working and requires a values-driven, whole-school approach. (Dr Pooky Knightsmith has also written extensively on attendance issues as relating to mental health – her latest article offering 10 steps to creating a “safe” school, can be found here.)

There are also many practical tools and resources to help implement mental health and wellbeing approaches which can work for both staff and students, such as the On My Mind resources from the Anna Freud Centre. Some schools have described their role as empowering parents and young people to access the right tools.

Below are further examples of good practice identified in feedback from schools and colleges following take up of the DfE grants:

  • “I’ve started meeting regularly with the SENCO and our designated safeguarding lead. Since the training we have established a much tighter team and we feel it is helping us to pick up students early. We use data better, inviting senior colleagues to join us to review data on attendance, progress and behaviour, looking for clues to who is starting to struggle. Our collective intelligence is allowing us to be more effective and target support where it’s most needed.”
  • “Having a senior mental health lead driving strategy has helped us to normalise the issues, expectations and support across the college.”
  • “There have been some unexpected outcomes of deciding wellbeing is a whole school priority – we are now adopting a more intersectional approach and sharing data and professional insights better. We are recognising some wellbeing traits among our students from minority ethnic groups that we had previously missed.”
  • “Our school has always valued student voice but post-Covid we needed a refresh as young people’s voice had lost agency. After a recent internal review, we decided as a senior leadership team to identify students as Mental Health Champions across the school. It’s been so successful that we are considering parent champions too.”

 

Need for more resources

Despite the efforts and progress cited above, there must be more prevention work and access to clinical interventions to stop the high numbers of young people suffering mental health issues in the first place.

Schools and colleges are providing good examples of how they are learning to address the rise in low-level needs. However, there remains a very clear gap between mid-level and acute needs that schools and colleges simply cannot and should not bear sole responsibility for – these are clearly needs which require clinical intervention.

An online forum for support and communities of practice for all schools and colleges needs to be established. This would provide on-going peer support for staff.

For those with acute needs and who have had mental health issues previously, more resource both for continuing school support and for wider children’s services such as CAMHS, is needed to address problems which are long-standing. Resources are needed to embed new practices. Funding needs to be found for this.

  • Anne Murdoch is a senior adviser in college leadership at the Association of School and College Leaders. Margaret Mulholland is ASCL’s SEND and inclusion specialist.

 

Further information and resources