Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a yearly standardised mental health questionnaire for all secondary school children.

Schools make a real difference to the mental wellbeing of their pupils, and the Government recognises that this is already a priority for many of them. According to the Department’s school snapshot survey published in winter 2018, 92% of secondary schools and 86% of primary schools already use tools such as surveys to monitor their pupils’ wellbeing.

To help more schools to access evidence-based approaches to measure and support wellbeing, the Government will provide wellbeing measurement advice that will enable schools to navigate the resources and tools available to them.

The Government will continue to engage with leading experts on the measurement of mental health and wellbeing in schools. Nationally, the Government draws upon large-scale sample surveys to understand trends in children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, and we recently published the first ‘State of the nation’ report on this vitally important issue.