Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Answer of 26 April 2022 to Question 154193, on Mental Health Services: Children, if he will make additional funding available for the 75 per cent of schools and colleges who will not supported by mental health support teams by 2022-23 to provide professional counselling for their pupils.

As a department, we are committed to building education providers’ capability to create safe, calm, and supportive environments for children and young people, where they can access mental health and wellbeing support if and when they need it.

The department recognises professional counselling can form an important part of an education providers’ approach to mental wellbeing, and we have set a strong expectation in our ‘Counselling in schools: a blueprint for the future’ guidance that over time, all schools will offer counselling services to their pupils. This guidance is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/497825/Counselling_in_schools.pdf.

Many children and young people also benefit from other in-school support, including from trained pastoral staff, educational psychologists and Emotional Literacy Support Assistants, who may offer a range of therapies. It is vital that schools and colleges continue to have the freedom to choose what support to offer their pupils based on need.

Schools can use the additional £1 billion of recovery premium funding announced in the autumn, on top of pupil premium funding, and their increased core budget to support their pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, including for counselling or other therapeutic services.

To support schools and colleges to introduce effective approaches to mental health and wellbeing, the department has committed to offer all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025. Over 8,000 schools and colleges, which includes half of all state-funded secondary schools in England, have taken up the offer so far, which has been backed by £9.5 million in the 2021/21 financial year. On 12 May, the department announced an additional £7 million to extend senior mental health lead training to even more schools and college to meet our ambition of reaching two-thirds of eligible education providers by 2023, bringing the total amount of funding for the 2022/23 financial year to £10 million.

As part of the training, senior leaders will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to understand the mental health needs of their student population and consider the range of in-school provision needed, such as counselling services.

Information on progress introducing Mental Health Support Teams is included in a report published on 12 May 2022, which follows the news that more than 2.4 million children and young people now have access to support in schools and colleges. This report is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision. NHS England has also announced that over 500 teams will be confirmed this year, which will surpass the government’s original ambition to have 400 teams in place by April 2023. This article is available here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/05/nhs-fast-tracks-mental-health-support-for-millions-of-pupils/.