Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many trained mental health first aiders there are in secondary schools in England.

The department does not hold data on the number of Mental Health First Aiders in schools and we believe it is important that schools are able to decide what training they offer to their staff based on the individual circumstances of the school.

However, we have made sure that schools have access to a range of training, so teachers understand and respond to the mental health and wellbeing issues that pupils face, including those issues that are as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The response to the consultation on the ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper’, published in July 2018, confirmed our commitment to provide mental health awareness training for a member of staff from all state-funded secondary schools in England by March 2020. ​The Department of Health and Social Care awarded the final year (19-20) of this 3 year programme to deliver Mental Health Awareness Training to all eligible secondary schools to the Anna Freud Centre, having previously been delivered by Mental Health First Aid England.

For the longer term, we announced £9.5 million on 10 May 2021 to offer senior mental health lead training to around a third of all state schools and colleges in the 2021/22 academic year, as part of its commitment to offer this training to all state schools and colleges by 2025. A senior mental health lead is a strategic leadership role in a school or college, responsible for overseeing the settings whole school or college approach to promote children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, as well as supporting those who need help with their mental health to receive appropriate support. The role is not mandatory, and the senior mental health lead training will not be compulsory.

Since applications opened in October 2021, over 8,000 eligible schools and colleges have applied for a senior mental health training grant. Over 6,500 of these have booked onto a Department for Education quality-assured training course and over 3,500 senior leads are estimated to have begun their training.

Ahead of this, to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, our recent £15 million Wellbeing for Education Recovery and Return programmes provided free expert training, support and resources for school and college staff dealing with children and young people experiencing mental health issues. Information provided by 95% of local authorities, on how they delivered training and support using Wellbeing for Education Return funding, suggests that training and support reached over 12,000 education settings. Many local authorities have also told us that this funding has enabled and accelerated cross-system collaboration to support education settings, staff, children and young people and their families. Local areas continue to share examples of practice (promotional materials, worksheets, presentations, links to recorded sessions and local directories and evaluations) with us and each other.