Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of establishing an annual survey of children's wellbeing.

The wellbeing of children and young people is a priority for this government. It is central to achieving the aims of the department and we have committed to publishing ‘State of the Nation: Children and Young People’s Wellbeing’ reports annually to bring together publicly available data, including that collected regularly by the Office of National Statistics on wellbeing.

On 10 October 2020, the department published the second annual report which focused on children and young people’s experience associated with wellbeing during the COVID-19 outbreak. The report is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-the-nation-2020-children-and-young-peoples-wellbeing. The report has helped the government, children and young people’s services, schools, parents and anyone interested in children and young people’s wellbeing to understand their experiences of the COVID-19 outbreak, the measures put in place to reduce the impact of the outbreak, and the broader effects on society.

We are continuing to monitor the emerging evidence on the experiences of children and young people during the outbreak to ensure the support measures being put in place by the government, including in the longer term, are informed by the most up-to-date evidence.

In particular, Public Health England is monitoring the impacts of the outbreak, including on children and young people, and is publishing regular surveillance reports. Their report about population mental health and wellbeing in England during the COVID-19 outbreak was last updated on 8 April 2021: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-mental-health-and-wellbeing-surveillance-report.