Pupil Mental Health, Well-being and Development

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I join the chorus of thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for tabling this debate; I pay tribute to her boundless energy. I would love to have the opportunity to show her around the school where I teach as well, because we have a very high standard of discipline and I did not recognise the institutional bullying that seems to go on. On that point, I must as ever declare my interest as a secondary school teacher in a state school in London. It is always an honour to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester, with his very thoughtful ideas.

There is no point in talking about the role of schools if children are not in schools. Some 1.8 million children are persistently absent, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said. For a lot, that is the only place where their well-being is protected, and it is so important that we get them in there.

The Royal College of GPs advises that

“mild or moderate anxiety, whilst sometimes difficult emotions, can be a normal part of growing up for many children and young people”.

We need to get them back. Mild anxiety becomes anxiety. Nobody wants to go to school on a Monday morning. That leads to bigger things. I would be very interested to hear what the Government are doing, rather than being fairly punitive with parents and schools, about engaging students and getting them back in.

Anybody is better off in a school. School is where you can triage students; they can be sent towards CAMHS or MHSTs, whether or not they have been previously diagnosed. These all need to be funded properly. I have talked before about the playground; teachers are very good at spotting things, whether that is bullying or changes in behaviour. Again, they can triage and get the professionals in.

Children are social animals. They need school, which is where they build up all these techniques to get them through life. We need them back. SEN needs to be dealt with; again, that is dealt with at school. In a bedroom, it is very difficult to spot a symptom.

There are also external influences we need to look at. The very good charity Tom’s Trust provides mental health, well-being and psychological support for 536 children with brain tumours and their families—about 1,600 people. Children at school might have a very sick sibling; it might be invisible. I declare an interest in that the founder of Tom’s Trust, Debs Mitchell, is a great friend of mine.

We underestimate all this, but schools can obviously do more as well. The curriculum needs to change; how many times have I stood up and said this in my short career here? The House of Lords Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee published its final report in December 2023, with many excellent recommendations, pretty much all of which the Government have just rejected. The noble Lord, Lord Johnson, the chairman of the committee, said in yesterday’s Times that:

“This government’s attempt to recreate a 1950s curriculum is of little help to many disadvantaged schoolchildren”.


As many people here have said, we need more fun in schools. We need schools to be places where children want to go and teachers want to teach. We blame the Victorians for a lot of things—this beautiful building is not one of them—but we have this Victorian idea that education should be a grind; that medicine should taste horrible; that food is just to sustain you. School should be fun.

I will talk about something that I know the Minister will approve of—sport. Nobody has talked about sport. We need two hours-plus of team games for every student every week. There is nothing like getting muddy, bloody and possibly violent to make you feel better.

I adore swimming. Obviously, it is a difficult one. I defy anybody to get into a pond, swim in cold water and remember the problem they went in with in the first place. We have all talked about singing. What could be better than a load of students in a room singing together? The wonderful charity Young Enterprise has a series of lessons aimed specifically at mental health and money management called “Money on my Mind”, which should be on the curriculum.

The school where I teach has reduced the number of GCSEs so that students can take subjects such as art without having to take an exam at the end or do coursework. They can do it just for fun, which gives them more headspace. However, to do that we need teachers who are confident and rested and feel valued. If their mental health is good, they are confident and happy, and that goes through all their relationships. We all know what happens to relationships if you are tired and stressed.

We need a confidence reset for children. Dame Rachel de Souza was quoted. I quote from her foreword to The Big Answer:

“If adults are to learn one thing from this report, it should be as follows. This is not a ‘snowflake generation.’ It is a heroic generation”.


We need them to know that.