Over the course of their education, children spend over 7,800 hours at school. With such a huge amount of time spent in the classroom, schools provide an ideal environment for promoting good emotional wellbeing and identifying early behaviour changes and signs of mental distress. The social and emotional skills, knowledge and behaviours that young people learn in the classroom can help them to build resilience and set the pattern for how they will manage their mental health throughout their lives.

Emotional wellbeing is a clear indicator of academic achievement, success and satisfaction in later life. Evidence shows that mental health and wellbeing programmes in schools, can lead to significant improvements in children’s mental health, and social and emotional skills. Wellbeing provision in schools can also lead to reductions in classroom misbehaviour and bullying.

However, despite the known benefits of good wellbeing provision, at present the education system is unbalanced. There is too much emphasis on academic attainment and not enough focus on promoting the wellbeing of students. The prominence given to exams and academic attainment within the education system is having a negative impact, with 80% of young people saying that exam pressure has significantly impacted on their mental health.

You may be aware that our school is taking part in Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in The School’s Mental Health Award.  The aim is to give the school a framework for whole school mental health development by:

 To improve the overall school environment to strengthen the mental health of pupils, staff and parents  

• Reduce to risks of future mental health difficulties impacting on the future lives of pupils
• Enable and enhance the full potential of all pupils
• Ensure schools are using evidence-base approaches that align to professional and government guidelines 
• Provide a developmental framework so your school can make realistic improvements in the mental health of your pupils, staff and community

 The eight competencies are: 

1. Leadership and strategy
2. Organisational structure and culture – staff
3. Organisational structure and culture – pupils
4. Support for staff
5. Professional development and learning
6. Support for pupils
7. Working with parents and carers
8. Working with external services

The Government has committed to introducing  Relationships and Sex Education for all secondary schools. DfE will also consult on introducing mandatory Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) lessons for all schools. This provides an important opportunity to embed wellbeing and resilience into the curriculum. Alongside this, DfE has announced new Randomised Control Trials to test the effectiveness of interventions aimed at promoting good mental health. However, changes to the curriculum are only part of the solution to improving wellbeing in schools. Lessons should form part of a wider “whole school approach”.

We engage with this through our ‘ARCH’ days which occur three times a year, and through embedding this into our teaching. You can read more about the curriculum at THS on the ‘Curriculum’ tab.

A sharp focus on promoting wellbeing, building resilience and good mental health will improve outcomes for our children and young people. The benefits for individuals, families, business and the economy are clear – increased employability, capability and productivity, reduced absence, reduced demand on services and improved family relationships and happiness.

Currently, for many children and young people help is simply coming too late. In order to try and support with this we have put a greater focus on the early identification of problems, earlier intervention, and increased preventative work to tackle the growing crisis of undiagnosed and untreated children’s mental health.