Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of Education Support's report entitled Teacher Wellbeing Index 2024, published in November 2024.

Education Support’s Teacher Wellbeing Index provides an insight into the mental health and wellbeing of teachers and education staff working in the UK.

Ensuring our education workforce are supported is critical to retaining teachers our children need and to deliver high-quality teaching for every child. The department is working in partnership with the sector and mental health experts to improve staff mental health and wellbeing to boost retention. Measures to do so include:

• Continued promotion of the education staff wellbeing charter, which sets out shared commitments to protect and promote the wellbeing of staff in schools and colleges, more than 4,000 schools and colleges have adopted the charter. The charter can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter.
• Funded mental health and wellbeing support for school and college leaders, which includes professional supervision and counselling. With more than 2,500 leaders have benefitted from the support so far. More information can be accessed at: https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/get-help/help-for-your-staff/wellbeing-services/professional-supervision/.
• Making a range of resources available to help schools prioritise staff wellbeing. For example, the department’s ‘Improve workload and wellbeing for school staff’ service, which was developed alongside school leaders, provides tools to support schools to identify opportunities to cut excessive workload and improve staff wellbeing; and guidance to support school leaders and staff to help manage behaviour in schools.

The department knows there are further changes needed to make to ensure the system is most effective for children, schools and staff, and to reset the relationship with the sector.