Mindfulness in Schools

Debate between Damian Hinds and Andy Carter

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)]

It is good to see you in the Chair for today’s debate, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) on bringing this important subject to Westminster Hall today. I thank and commend everybody who has taken part: my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington South (Andy Carter) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who speaks for the Opposition.

It is very important to discuss these issues, especially in the light of the tragic death of Brianna Ghey, who was a constituent of the hon. Member for Warrington North, and the outcome of the murder trial. It is a truly heartbreaking case, and our thoughts are with Brianna’s family and friends. Obviously, no one should be subject to any violence, let alone have their young life cut short in this most unspeakable and unthinkable way.

Schools and colleges should be respectful and tolerant places where bullying is never tolerated. I want to specifically recognise the work of Brianna’s mother to create positive action following her most terrible loss. Her ambition to promote empathy, compassion and resilience through the Peace in Mind campaign is one that we all commend.

There are few things more critical than the happiness of our children. The Government actively explore approaches that could improve young people’s mental health and wellbeing, such as mindfulness interventions. We are, of course, in Children’s Mental Health Week, and yesterday was—this is not exactly the same subject, but there is a lot of commonality, as has been explored again today—Safer Internet Day.

There is evidence of the benefits of mindfulness, and many schools will feel a positive impact on their students from programmes such as the one provided by the Mindfulness in Schools Project, but we should remember that it might not be right for everyone, every school or every individual in a school. Schools should retain flexibility to choose the interventions that suit their pupils and their local context, supported by high-quality evidence and guidance.

To help schools decide what support to put in place, we are offering all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by next year. Over 14,400 have claimed such a grant so far, including four fifths of the schools in Warrington. The training supports the leads to assess and implement interventions that are suitable for their setting, which can include mindfulness. Our recently launched targeted support toolkit builds on that, providing senior mental health leads with further guidance on evidence-based interventions, again including mindfulness.

In addition, schools can look to the Education Endowment Foundation and to Foundations, formerly known as the Early Intervention Foundation, to review the evidence on the various approaches to support their students. We are funding a large-scale programme—I believe it is one of the biggest ever programmes—of randomised controlled trials of approaches to improving pupil mental wellbeing, improving our understanding of what works and providing new evidence for schools to use in planning their approaches. More than 300 schools have been involved, and the findings will help us evaluate the impact of a variety of interventions on mental health and on wider measures, including wellbeing, behavioural issues and teacher relationships.

The programme includes the INSPIRE trial, which is testing three approaches to improving mental wellbeing in school: daily five-minute mindfulness-based exercises, daily five-minute relaxation exercises and a new curriculum programme for mental wellbeing. I reminded myself earlier today that it was this week in 2019 that I had the opportunity of visiting Hayes School in Bromley, which was taking part in the programme, and where I had the chance to join a classroom-based mindfulness session. The trials have gone on for quite some time, although covid, as with so many other things, took a chunk out of the middle. However, the trials will conclude this Easter, and I want the results to be out as soon as possible—I hope by the autumn.

Our senior lead training also promotes tackling mental health and wellbeing through the curriculum, both directly in health education and by integrating the issue into the wider curriculum. In September 2020, we made health education, including mental health education, compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools. That guarantees teaching on how to recognise the early signs of mental wellbeing concerns and where and how to seek support and self-care techniques, which again can include mindfulness.

We should remember that wellbeing-promoting behaviours can be encouraged beyond the classroom, and that has come up a number of times in the debate today. In particular, schools can develop their enrichment offers with an eye to NHS England’s “5 steps to mental wellbeing”, which sets out the steps that we can all take to improve our personal wellbeing. Those are, first, connecting with others; secondly, being active; thirdly, learning new skills; fourthly, giving to others; and, of course, fifthly, paying attention to the present moment—something that colleagues present might recognise as mindfulness.

We have spoken a number of times about the general extracurricular, or co-curricular, set of activities and their importance in developing character and resilience, and I could not agree more with colleagues about the importance of everything outside the classroom. That can be about outdoor learning, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said, or about sporting activities, music or voluntary work—all manner of things that help to give us a sense of purpose.

There is also a range of self-regulation and wellbeing techniques, and mindfulness is one. Seeing my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham reminded me of a very good product created by West Sussex CAMHS, which I think is called an A to Z of wellbeing techniques for use with primary school children—of course, issues can sometimes develop from quite an early age.

The hon. Member for Strangford and others are right to talk about the particular pressures that young people today face. In many ways, the world they are growing up into is better, with more opportunities than ever before, but there are also new and different pressures that just did not exist when anybody in this Chamber was young. A lot of that is to do with electronica and social media.

[Andy Carter]

Could the Minister perhaps say a little more about some of the calls made for social media platforms to do more to prevent under-16-year-olds, in particular, from accessing their services? One of the greatest mental health challenges is the incessant presence of a mobile phone and a screen.

[Damian Hinds]

Indeed, but I do not want to try our Chair’s patience too much by moving too far beyond mindfulness, which is of course the subject of the debate. I have taken a very active interest in these matters for a long time, in my time at the Department for Education and at the Home Office, and otherwise in Parliament, and I think social media companies can do more.

Of course, we have just legislated in the Online Safety Act 2023. Most social media companies stipulate a minimum age of 13, but it is not uncommon for people to find a way around that minimum age. With the Online Safety Act, those companies will have to say how they are going to enforce that minimum age and then deliver on it. They are also going to have to ensure that they are protecting children from harmful content and removing, in good time, content that is illegal and identified as such. That is the legislation, but we do not need to wait for a law to do some of those things. I would say to everybody working in the technology field or in social media, most of whom have families themselves, that we all have a shared responsibility to think about the mental health, wellbeing and true interests of children and young people growing up.

I was just talking about the range of extracurricular activities, and I want to mention the range of support across Government for those, including the national youth guarantee and the enrichment partnerships pilot. We are also encouraging children to spend time in nature and to take in their surroundings, which I think the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale will welcome. The natural world has so much to offer in terms of grounding us, and we can see the potential of that through our work on the national education nature park, for example.

We have spoken a couple of times, rightly, about wider mental health provision, particularly for children and adolescents. More resourcing has been and is going into CAMHS; the issue is that the demand has also been growing. An investment of up to a further £2.3 billion a year is going into transforming NHS mental health services, including meeting the aim that over 300,000 more children and young people will have been able to access NHS-funded mental health support by March 2024.

A number of things that colleagues have talked about, including mindfulness—the key subject of the debate—and self-regulation techniques, general wellbeing and building up resilience, have an important role in helping to prevent some of that pressure. One wants to make people resilient and resistant to some of the problems that inevitably come our way in life and able, if there are relatively low-level issues, to deal with them before they become bigger. One also wants, as I said, to relieve some of that pressure.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North rightly mentioned counsellors and mental health professionals in schools. Many schools already provide targeted support to pupils through counsellors, pastoral staff, educational psychologists and other roles. No single intervention works for every pupil; again, I think it is important that settings have the freedom to decide what is the best support in their circumstance and for their cohort of children.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Hinds and Andy Carter

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

What the hon. Gentleman said is just not the case. He is absolutely right that securing accommodation on release is incredibly important—we have just had a similar conversation about employment, but accommodation underpins so much else, including the ability to get into work—but the tier 3 accommodation that he mentions had, by February of this year, already supported more than 5,000 people who would otherwise have left prison without a home to go to.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

Further to the Minister’s comments about the progress made in magistrates courts, may I thank him for recently meeting members of the Cheshire bench who came to Parliament? Will he update the House on the decision to pause the additional sentencing powers granted to magistrates in 2022? Does he agree with me and members of the Magistrates Association that restoring those powers could free up about 1,700 extra Crown court sitting days each year?