Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether it is her Department's policy that universities should have a statutory duty of care to students.

The department has asked the higher education (HE) Student Support Champion, Professor Edward Peck, to continue to work with students, parents, mental health experts and the HE sector to drive meaningful change in mental health practice through the HE Mental Health Implementation Taskforce.

The Office for Students (OfS) is providing £400,000 of funding to the student mental health charity, Student Minds, to rapidly expand the scale and membership of the University Mental Health Charter Programme. The Programme supports universities to adopt a whole-institution approach to mental health, and also follow a process of continuous improvement to work towards the Charter Award. The University Mental Health Charter is already raising standards within the sector.

The department has appointed academic experts from the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health to undertake a National Review of HE Suicides. It will report findings by spring 2025, ensuring lessons from tragic cases are shared widely across the sector.

In 2024, to support HE providers to engage with the National Review of HE Suicides and develop mental health and suicide prevention strategies, the OfS is allocating £15 million of funding. This funding is in addition to the £10 million provided early this year to support student mental health and hardship.

The government is determined that children and young people receive the mental health care they need which is why it has committed to recruit 8500 additional staff across children and adult mental health services.