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Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing
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Child of the North - Improving mental health and wellbeing with and through educational settings

26 April 2024
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Photograph of school children with school dinners

The third report in a year-long series – produced jointly by Child of the North and the Centre for Young Lives – that seeks to deliver a country that works for all children and young people, sets out a new plan for Government to boost children’s mental health through schools.

With children spending more time in school than in any other formal institutional structure, educational settings provide the ideal opportunity to reach large numbers of children simultaneously and can also facilitate intervention with pupils displaying early mental health or behavioural symptoms.

Full report available here.

The report, Improving mental health and wellbeing with and through educational settings reveals, however, that half of England’s school children will still be without access to Mental Health Support Teams after 2025 under current plans.

The report comes amid a national epidemic of children’s mental health problems. In 2022, 18% of children aged 7-to-16-years-old and 22% of young people aged 17-to-24 had a probable mental health condition.

The report calls for:

  • An expansion of the mental health support offered through schools and educational settings, starting in the primary school years, to all schools.
  • The creation of a network of ‘one stop shop’ local online NHS information hubs, based on NHS Healthier Together, to signpost children and families to appropriate local mental health support where it is available.
  • Harnessing the power of digital technology in a way that benefits the mental health of children by rolling out school-based research surveys like the existing #BeeWell and Age of Wonder projects nationally.
  • Tackling of the upstream determinants of poor mental health, including early support for neurodivergent children. The Government’s strategy to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of young people should include a focus on the pre-school and primary school years.
  • Adressing the workforce crisis in educational psychology provision, to encourage a larger number of graduate psychologists to support schools, alongside teacher training and career development that equips staff to create classroom environments that promote pupil wellbeing and support the mental health needs of pupils.