Question to the Department for Education:

What steps his Department is taking to support the mental health and wellbeing of (a) children, (b) young people and (c) educational staff within education settings.

The government is committed to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of children, young people and education staff during this period. The return to school for all pupils was prioritised due to the significant and proven impact caused by being out of school, including on wellbeing. The support schools provide to pupils following the return to face-to-face education should include time devoted to wellbeing.

Our new Mental Health in Education Action Group is putting mental health and wellbeing at the heart of recovery plans. It is considering how we can support the mental wellbeing of children, young people and staff following the return to education settings, with the transition period between education settings in September, and in the longer term.

Schools can use their additional funding from the COVID-19 “catch-up” package for pastoral support for mental wellbeing where pupils need it. In addition to this, the new £700 million package includes a new one-off Recovery premium for state primary, secondary and special schools to use as they see best to support disadvantaged pupils. This will help schools to provide their disadvantaged pupils with a one-off boost to the support, both academic and pastoral, that has been proved most effective in helping them recover from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Furthermore, we recently announced a £79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health support, which is on top of the £2.3 million funding for mental health in the NHS long term plan. This will accelerate the roll out of mental health support teams. We have delivered ‘Wellbeing for Education Return’ an £8 million scheme, which has helped schools and colleges to develop the knowledge and confidence to offer pastoral support at this time.

We have also taken action to respond to the mental health needs of school leaders by launching a pilot, led by the Education Support charity, to provide online peer-support and telephone supervision from experts to around 250 school leaders. Following the success of the pilot, we have recently agreed to extend this support to an additional 160 school leaders until August.