Schools: Discipline

(asked on 15th October 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the findings of the survey by Team Teach on the Hidden Education Challenges during the Pandemic, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of new behaviours and the emergence of new behaviour trends on (a) pupils' and teachers' mental health and (b) teaching.


Answered by
Robin Walker Portrait
Robin Walker
This question was answered on 25th October 2021

Attending school or college in person plays a central role in promoting well-being for pupils. The department is pursuing an ambitious programme of work to improve behaviour in schools and to improve the mental health and well-being of pupils and teachers.

The department’s £10 million behaviour hubs programme, launched in April, is projected to support more than 500 schools over 3 years. It will support schools to learn from the best in developing excellent behaviour cultures. In June 2021, the department also launched a call for evidence on managing good behaviour and how schools’ behaviour policies have changed in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. This evidence will be considered alongside a public consultation later this year on the Behaviour and Discipline in Schools guidance. The guidance will provide practical advice to schools about how to encourage good behaviour and respond effectively to incidents of poor behaviour in and out of the classroom and support staff in tackling behavioural issues that have arisen from COVID-19.

The department’s mental health and behaviour guidance for schools includes specific information about supporting pupils’ mental health and wellbeing: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mental-health-and-behaviour-in-schools--2. This is in addition to the £79 million to boost children and young people’s mental health support announced in March 2021, which will include increasing the number of Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges to around 400, covering an estimated 3 million children and young people by 2023.

To provide further support for staff dealing with children and young people experiencing additional pressures from the last year, including trauma, anxiety, or grief, the government announced the £7 million additional funding for local authorities to deliver Wellbeing for Education Recovery programme in May 2021. Alongside this, we are providing £9.5 million to train a Senior Mental Health lead in up to 7,800 schools and colleges in England in this academic year; and funding an adapted ‘Link’ programme which is designed to improve partnerships between health and education leaders in local areas.

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