Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many full-time equivalent mental health staff were recruited in education settings in (a) 2019, (b) 2020, (c) 2021 and (d) 2022.

The department does not collect or hold information on the number of full time equivalent mental health staff recruited by education providers.

The department thinks it is important to promote joint approaches between education and health to provide coherent support to children and young people. That is why, through ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health: a green paper’, the department established NHS-funded mental health support teams, made up of education mental health practitioners, to provide early support, overseen by clinicians. More than 2.4 million children and young people now have access to a mental health support team and more teams are on the way, increasing from 287 to over 500 teams by 2024.

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. Regarding higher education providers, through strategic guidance to the Office for Students, the department asked that it distributes £15 million of funding in the 2022/23 financial year to give additional support for transitions from school/college to university, and through targeting funding to support partnership working with NHS services to provide pathways of care for students.