Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what specialist support is provided in schools for pupils with mental health problems.

The Department’s nationally representative survey of school and college provision published in 2017 suggested that the most common types of support offered for pupils with identified mental health needs were educational psychological support (61%) and counselling services (61%), with 84% of secondary schools providing their pupils with access to counselling support. Survey results can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-mental-health-in-schools-and-colleges.

Since this survey was done, the Department has taken significant steps to improve access to specialist mental health support in schools and colleges. We are introducing new Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) to provide dedicated support to schools and colleges and quicker access to an increased range of support and treatments. These teams will employ new staff who are being recruited and trained specifically for the programme. The first 25 trailblazer sites delivering 59 new teams were announced in December 2018. These MHSTs are all expected to complete their training by early 2020 and will be fully operational following this. The aim is to cover between a fifth and a quarter of the country by 2023. The teams are part of extensive wider investment in the NHS which means that by 2023-24, an extra 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 years in England will receive mental health support.

To support more schools to provide counselling the Department has provided advice on how to deliver high quality school-based counselling, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/counselling-in-schools.