Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of (a) the adequacy of counselling services in schools for young people and (b) the effectiveness of curriculum content on emotional well-being and self-harm.

We recognise that schools have a vital role to play in helping to promote good mental health for all their pupils as well as providing early support where mental health problems have been identified

Schools are best placed to decide what support and teaching they need to provide and we know that many schools provide their pupils with counselling. While we do not collect detailed central information on this provision, we have produced a blueprint for school counselling services which provides schools with practical, evidence-based advice informed by schools and counselling experts on how to deliver high quality school based counselling. More information can be found online here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/counselling-in-schools. However, teachers are not mental health professionals and it is important that students can get swift access to specialist mental health support where needed. An additional £1.25bn is available for mental health services for children, young people and new mothers over the next 5 years, to ensure timely access to appropriate specialist support is available.

In March 2015, we published a review of the research evidence for Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education teaching. This covers effective practice and teaching as well as the impact of PSHE teaching on pupil’s outcomes, including their emotional health and well-being and their academic attainment. This research is published online here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pshe-education-a-review-of-impact-and-effective-practice

We have already funded the PSHE Association to produce guidance to improve teaching about mental health in PSHE which was published in March 2015. This will be supplemented by detailed lesson plans for Key Stages 1-4. More information is available online here https://www.pshe-association.org.uk/news_detail.aspx?ID=1435