Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to provide additional resources to schools to support the mental health of their students.

Schools have an important role to play in supporting the mental health of pupils. On 4 December 2017, the Government published the green paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision. We are consulting on proposals which will be supported by over £300 million of funding.

Up to £95 million of this money will be used to fund training for Designated Senior Mental Health Leads in schools, which will cover effective ways to establishing a whole school approach to promoting and supporting good mental health.

Schools also need access to trained and clinically supervised support for pupils with mental health issues. The Government will provide £215 million over three years to fund new clinically supervised Mental Health Support Teams to work closely with designated senior mental health leads in schools to provide evidence based help for pupils with mild to moderate mental health needs. It will also support mental health awareness training for all schools. This preventative approach will provide earlier intervention, to help prevent mental health problems from developing. It will also provide a better link to specialist NHS mental health services.