Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of a suicide prevention strategy aimed at (a) school and (b) university students.

The government is committed to reducing the numbers of lives lost to suicide, including through prevention in educational institutions.

The Department of Health and Social Care published a Prevention Strategy for England on 11 September 2023 with over 130 actions aimed at reducing the suicide rate. The strategy also sets ambitions to improve support for people who self-harm and people who have been bereaved by suicide. As part of the strategy, a number of groups have been identified for consideration for tailored or targeted action at a national level, including children and young people.

Guidance to schools is reviewed regularly, including the statutory ‘Keeping children safe in education’ guidance that all schools must have regard to. Amongst other things, the guidance sets out the role all staff must play in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, including identifying where mental health concerns are also safeguarding concerns and making appropriate referrals into early help support services and statutory support services as appropriate.

The statutory guidance for relationships, sex and health education (RSHE), which came into force in September 2020, advises that schools should approach teaching about self-harm and suicide carefully and should be aware of the risks to pupils from exposure to materials that are instructive rather than preventative, including websites or videos that provide instructions or methods of self-harm or suicide. The guidance can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.

The department is currently reviewing the RSHE guidance and as part of this process the department will explore whether additional content is required on suicide prevention.

The National Review of Higher Education Student Suicides will report with important lessons for better supporting students and preventing tragedies in higher education (HE) settings in the spring. This will be published alongside updated data on HE student suicides from the Office for National Statistics.