Comic Relief 2019: It’s a laughing matter

Secondary schools across the country are facing extremely challenging times. Cuts to funding, changes to exams, mounting workloads and problems recruiting teachers are putting staff under immense pressure.

At the same time, schools are facing a student mental health crisis. A PISA report into student wellbeing in 2017 found that around one in six students in the UK say they are unhappy with their life (putting us 38th out of the 48 countries surveyed). And in its report Wise-up: Prioritising wellbeing in schools (April 2017), mental health charity YoungMinds warns that we are facing a mental health crisis in our classrooms:

These problems are clearly extraordinarily complex and, while some young people will need specialist or clinical support, schools can play an important role in creating healthy and happy spaces and in promoting emotional wellbeing.