Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Main Page: Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Conservative - Life peer)Mental Health Services in Schools and Colleges
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for securing this debate. As we have heard, this is one of a number on mental health issues that have taken place in the past few weeks, and I welcome the chance to concentrate on education and what we are doing to rise to the challenges set out in the Future in Mind report.
Within the Department for Education, the Secretary of State has spoken about her own personal commitment to improving the mental health of children and young people. Last week she was at Upton Cross Primary School in Newham, looking at the work it does with Place2Be, one of the 17 voluntary organisations that are benefiting from nearly £5 million that the department is providing this year to support mental health projects. Place2Be works to provide early counselling support in a non-stigmatising way that is effectively part of the day-to-day life of the school, taking the whole-school approach the department has promoted through its guidance in this area.
In further evidence of the Government’s commitment, Sam Gyimah was the first DfE Minister with a specific responsibility for mental health issues, and is continuing in this role. He worked very closely with Norman Lamb in the previous Government—I pay tribute to the work he did there—and is now working with Alistair Burt, the Health Minister, who has also made this area a top priority. Last Friday they appeared in front of the Youth Select Committee and next week are jointly hosting an event with stakeholders from across health, education and the voluntary sector about how to take forward Future in Mind. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about organising a meeting between Members of this House, the Department of Health and the Department for Education. I am happy to take that proposal back to colleagues.
As we have heard, schools and colleges play a key role in the lives of young people and in helping them become well-rounded, successful individuals in adult life. This means ensuring that students achieve academically but also helping them develop the attributes, behaviours and skills they need to get on in life. Qualities such as self-control and the ability to work well with others, to persevere, to have boundaries and to bounce back from adversity, coupled with values such as tolerance and respect, underpin future success and well-being. Schools and colleges have an important role to play in building this character and resilience, as well as promoting an understanding of mental health and respect for those with mental health issues.
To support this, we have already invested £5 million in character education, including £3.5 million in grants to support 14 projects, and held a national awards scheme, which attracted 550 applications from all different types of schools. For example, Tapton School, a high-performing academy in Sheffield, has developed “Learner Levels” to track students’ progress in five key character traits: resilience, reflectiveness, reciprocity, resourcefulness and respect. Percy Hedley School in Newcastle, a special school for children with cerebral palsy and/or speech and language difficulties, has developed a variety of programmes focusing on social communication to develop a problem-solving and can-do attitude in pupils.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about the importance of PE and sport. The primary PE and sport premium ensures that primary schools focus on PE, and the Government have already provided more than £300 million of ring-fenced funding for the academic years 2013-14 and 2014-15. A full report on the impact of this will be published in the autumn but I can provide a taster of the key findings, which are very encouraging. For example, 91% of schools reported an increase in the quality of PE teaching; 96% reported improvements in pupils’ physical fitness; 93% saw improvements in behaviour; and 96% thought the funding had contributed to a healthier lifestyle for their pupils.
The noble Baroness and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, also highlighted how art, music, drama and literature can help young people with self-expression and identity. The Government strongly believe that every child should experience a high-quality arts and cultural education throughout their time at school. Art, design and music are all compulsory subjects within the national curriculum for five to 14 year-olds, and at key stage 4 all pupils in maintained schools have an entitlement to study an arts subject if they wish.
Encouragingly, schools and colleges already recognise how good mental health can support success. A report published last December by the think tank CentreForum, which has already been referred to, found that 94% of secondary schools already promote positive mental health through lessons such as PSHE and drama or through school assemblies. In response to the noble Baroness’s question about PSHE, I say that we are considering the findings of the Education Select Committee report carefully and will respond in due course.
However, we also recognise that not all teachers are confident about what to cover in mental health lessons and how to lead discussions. That is why we funded the PSHE Association to produce guidance on teaching about mental health, which was published in March. Example lesson plans for key stages 1 to 4 will also be provided to schools. These will cover age-appropriate teaching on how to describe emotions and talk about anxieties and worries. As children grow older, the curriculum will cover more specific teaching about mental illness.
Of course, teachers are not mental health professionals and they need access to specialists and to be able to refer students quickly, when necessary. The Department for Education is contributing £1.5 million to a joint training pilot with NHS England to train mental health leads in education and specialist CAMHS to test how we can make professional links as effective as possible—an issue that has been raised by a number of noble Lords.
As the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Addington, highlighted, school and college staff need to know about mental health to be able to identify issues. While it is up to schools to decide what training their staff need, the Government have made sure that training is available for all adults working in schools. MindEd, a free online portal funded by the Department of Health, has been developed to enable adults working with children and young people to learn more about mental health problems and how to support them. Again, the CentreForum study found that 91% of secondary schools felt they had access to training for their staff. We want to encourage all schools to examine and take up opportunities.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about initial teacher training. As noble Lords know, Sir Andrew Carter chaired an independent review and the report was published in January. Following that, the Secretary of State has appointed an expert group to develop a framework of core initial teacher training content. This group is due to report at the end of the year and will consider the importance of including child development, as recommended by the review.
Students value being able to talk about issues and concerns in a safe environment, and as both noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Tyler, rightly said, school counsellor-linked services are often rated by both young people and school staff as an effective means of supporting mental health and emotional well-being, and a way of enhancing capacity to engage with studying. Most secondary schools in England offer access to counselling, where 50,000 to 70,000 sessions are delivered each year. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about universal access to counselling in England and it is certainly our strong expectation that over time all schools will want to make services available to their pupils. That is why we worked with schools and experts, including Place2Be, to publish a blueprint for school counselling services in March this year, which provides schools with practical, evidence-based advice on how to deliver high-quality school-based counselling, and to raise awareness of such services.
In our increasingly digital world, it is also important to help children to deal with online abuse, cyberbullying and websites that promote negative approaches to coping with issues. The new computing programmes of study, introduced in September 2014, ensure that e-safety is taught at all four key stages. The Government continue to make tackling all forms of bullying, including cyberbullying, a priority.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked about Ofsted inspections measuring well-being and mental health. Changes to inspections from this September were announced in June. The new inspection handbook sets out that inspectors should evaluate the experience of particular individuals and groups, including those with mental health needs.
It is vital that schools are given freedom to develop approaches that can best support their particular pupils. The capacity to innovate through the free schools programme is proving particularly valuable for young people with complex needs. For instance, both Stone Soup Academy in Nottingham and City Gateway in Tower Hamlets are alternative-provision free schools that bring together a range of support with a focus on getting disengaged and hard-to-reach learners back into education and training. Other developments are under way. For instance, the recently opened Family School, through collaboration with the Anna Freud Centre, is looking to incorporate the most up-to-date mental health practice in its provision for children with problematic behaviour.
As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, further education plays a vital role in educating a large number of students aged over 16, many of whom are some of the most disadvantaged and who have complex needs. Colleges have considerable experience of providing the support students need to help them progress into employment and further learning. The noble Lord highlighted several colleges that are leaders in this area. On his question and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about the mental health prevalence survey and whether it could include 16 to 18 year-olds, the answer is yes. It is still being put in place, but it should produce results next year.
The Government are committed to helping our most vulnerable young people, which is why the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme is providing £100 million to projects across the country to develop further effective ways to support children who need help from social care services, as highlighted by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. Among the projects being undertaken are the Priory’s education services, which are working to pilot a new type of residential home; Action for Children, which is transforming the support available for teenagers in west London; and the National Implementation Service, which is helping young people to tackle problem behaviour and substance abuse, and prevent their entering care.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked about the SEN reforms. We have been working hard to identify problems faced by local authorities and to put them in touch with specific support, including from pathfinder authorities that tested the reforms. We are also supporting the voluntary sector to develop practice and support.
I hope that noble Lords will recognise that what I have set out represents a significant programme of activity. Of course, we will continue to look at what more can be done to support schools and colleges in the important role that they play as the wider transformation of mental health services continues to happen.